Parental Involvement

Parental involvement is essential to an optimal programme:

• At least one parent is involved in the programme, usually joining in with team meetings and overlapping periodically throughout the week when possible.
• At least one parent should continue some tuition over the weekends, particularly to ensure that newly acquired skills are maintained and generalised. This enables the child to become more independent and gain increasing dignity in everyday life.
• Parents should continue behavioural interventions for reducing problem behaviours, throughout the child’s daily life.
• Siblings are also welcome to be involved. Sibling relationships are important and so developing this can also be a key aspect of your child’s programme.

In our own research, we identified a reduction in stress for parents in the first year of their child’s EIBI programme:

Eikeseth, S., Klintwall, L., Hayward, D. & Gale, C. (2015). Stress in parents of children with autism participating in early and intensive behavioral intervention. European Journal of Behavior Analysis, 16, 112-120.