Resilience Potential of Autistic Children’s Parents and Its Relationship to Family Functioning and Acceptance of Disability

Resilience, understood here as the way that parents cope with the vulnerability situation of having a child with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), gains importance when experiencing negativity in the family, school and social settings. The purpose of this study is to inquire into the relationship between resilience potential factors of parents of children with ASD, and disability acceptance and family functioning. This is a descriptive, non-experimental, cross-sectional, and correlational study. Eighty primary caregivers were administered a Resilience Potential Scale, a Family Functioning Scale, and a Semantic Differential Scale. One of the main findings from this study was the coexistence of risk and protective factors when facing this situation. When parents give meaning to their lives and can seek help to solve problems inherent to having a child with ASD, the family’s emotional bond is strengthened. However, when they display distress, anguish, or concern over this event, little tolerance and rule inconsistency within the family become present. This indicates poor adaptability to having a child with ASD -hopelessness is a sign associated with non-acceptance of disability. Yet parents’ self-determination and the affliction caused by having a child with ASD help maintain adequate family functioning and seek external support.