Parents Workgroup About Emotion Regulation

Parenting Workshop on Emotion Regulation

The purpose of this study is examine emotional regulation and reflective functioning in parents of children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) before and after an educational training (four sessions of group workshops). Our experimental aims are the following: 1) examine parental emotion regulation and reflective functioning in daily life, 2) examine child emotion regulation in their daily life 3)Learn about the training efficacy for ASD parents. This research study will help to formulate innovative treatment methods to reinforce positive emotion regulation and reflective functioning in both ASD children and their parents.

The parents will answer questionnaires and Parent Development Interview (PDI) and the Five Minute Free Speech Sample (FMSS) as well as a number of other questionnaires.

Parents will be randomized between intervention group and control group. First session

• Introduction
• Setting expectations and goals
• General explanation of emotions and their development.
• How to recognize emotions? Why is it important to recognize them?
• Minding parents and child emotions. Second session
• Emotion Regulation (general explanation).
• Strategic for emotion regulation (Adults)
• Strategic for emotion regulation (children)
• Parental emotion regulation and the influence on the child emotion regulation
• Difficulties in ER among children with ASD Third session
• Three steps method: Feel, Think-Rethink, Regulate.
• Theory, explanation and implementation.
• Discussion: Role play of challenging highly affective parent-child interaction

Fourth session:

• Three steps method: Feel, Think-Rethink, Regulate.
• Theory, explanation and implementation.
• Discussion: Role play of challenging highly affective parent-child interaction The parents will do another PDI and will fill up the questionnaires

Inclusion Criteria:

• Parents of children with autism ages 3-18

Exclusion Criteria:

• If they cant understand English they can not be part of the study.