Modern approaches to the study of a family raising a child with autism spectrum disorder
The article analyzes the modern approaches in domestic and foreign science to the study and assistance to families raising children with autism spectrum disorders. The urgency of the problem is due to the rapid increase in recent years in the number of children with autism spectrum disorders, the polymorphism of the clinical and psychological picture of their development, and the need for continuous psychological and pedagogical support for the family in which the child with autism is brought up. The methodological basis of this study is scientific theories and approaches inherent in foreign and domestic psychology of the family. The main research method is a theoretical analysis with the aim of generalizing and systematizing scientific approaches and the accumulated practical experience of psychological and pedagogical assistance to the family. The results showed that the attention of researchers was attracted by the socio-psychological characteristics of the family, its functional-role structure, and features of interpersonal interaction. In domestic and foreign studies of a family raising a child with disabilities, special attention is paid to the specifics of the reaction of family members to the appearance of a child with developmental disabilities, family education styles and their impact on the development of such a child. In modern psychological and pedagogical literature, a detailed description of the phenomenon of "autism" is presented. Moreover, there is a fairly large number of theoretical and empirical studies of the psychological characteristics of children with autism, the issues of correction and compensation of violations in their development, the effectiveness of various psychotherapeutic practices and correctional and pedagogical technologies are considered. The importance of the impact of both the family on the child and the child on all its members, as well as on the specifics of the functioning of the family as a whole, is convincingly proved. The psychological characteristics of the family, its habilitation and rehabilitation potential are represented as a resource for the development and social integration of individuals with autism spectrum disorders. This necessitates the identification of external and internal factors of the effective functioning of the family raising a child with autism. The authors analyze, generalize and systematize the results of modern domestic research, formulate little-studied areas of research in the field of psychology of the family raising a child with an autism spectrum disorder, requiring further systematic study.