DOES PARENTAL COPING BUFFER THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CHILD BEHAVIOR PROBLEMS AND PARENTAL REACTIONS IN FAMILIES OF CHILDREN WITH ASD?

Parents of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) experience high levels of stress related to their children’s symptoms and comorbid behavior problems. Positive parental coping is proposed to serve a buffering function; however, few studies have examined whether coping moderates the association between possible child stressors and parent outcomes in this population. These studies have focused on parent well-being as the main outcome variable but have not studied the extent to which the child-related stressors may impact parenting and contribute to dysfunctional parent-child interactions. The current study examined the degree to which positive parental coping may buffer parent reactions to child negative emotions against the potentially adverse effects of comorbid externalizing problems in 63 families of children with ASD. Parents reported on their children’s externalizing problems, their own coping behavior, and their reactions to their children’s negative emotions. The main effect between children’s externalizing problem behaviors and parent reactions to child negative emotion was not significant. However, positive coping moderated the association between children’s behavior problems and supportive parent reactions such that the parents of children with more externalizing problems reported less supportive reactions, but only when positive coping was low. This cross-sectional study is the first to examine the degree to which parent coping may buffer parenting quality against the effects of child problems.