Importance of Functional Skills for Children with Autism and its Influence on Life Satisfaction of their Parents

Autistic children require functional skills training such as toileting, brushing, grooming, etc., due to the disorder. Teaching and training them to do their day to day activities is very challenging and herculean tasks for the parents and; has a tremendous influence on the parent’s life satisfaction thereby influencing their family life, financial aspect, socialization, health, job etc. Thus an attempt has been made to assess the influence of functional skills on life satisfaction of parents of children with autism. Respondents were parents of children with autism who were between 5 to 10 years of age from various special schools in Bangalore city. Self- structured questionnaires developed by the investigator on the importance of functional skills and life satisfaction of parents of children with autism were used to obtain the information. The results of the study indicated that fathers worked to compensate for the household income and most of the mothers chose to be home makers to look after the needs of their children with autism. Children with autism have poor functional skills. The study revealed that when older children knew how to manage themselves, their mothers reported good life satisfaction. Therefore, there is a need to orient the parents to make an attempt to learn techniques for teaching the required functional skills to their children with autism as it will minimize the level of care involved in the day to day life. This will help the child with autism to learn and master the skills and become independent.