Parental Involvement

There is evidence that parents are central  to educational improvement begin maintained in autistic children, and that whenever possible, parents should be involved in the programme. One of the reasons for this is that parents are present in many contexts, and so this helps autistic children generalise favourable 'normal' behaviours to a wider context. 

Treatment contracts with parents are set up that specify the desired behaviour changes in their child and identify the techniques required to bring about change. Such techniques typically require parents to reinforce adaptive behaviour whilst withholding reinforcement for undesirable behaviour. Encouraging results have been found, particularly with parents who are able to commit themselves to a lengthy and time-consuming programme.

• Koegal et al. - demonstrated that 30 hours of parent training was as…