You may have seen it. The headline that says, “super-parenting improves children’s autism.” Besides being grammatically incorrect, it’s insulting. The implication, of course, from the headline is that parents who do not have super abilities or super skills can’t help their child. It sets an unhealthy expectation for parents who are already struggling to help their child. Worse, based on the feedback I have received, it has been hurtful to many parents.
If that wasn’t bad enough, the article headline went viral and the text itself doesn’t even properly represent the study it reports on. It’s time to set the record straight about the findings.
The scientific findings, published in the journal Lancet, described a follow-up of families who participated in an early intervention study published a few years ago that used what is considered the gold standard of treatment research, a randomized clinical trial. While the intervention improved interaction between parents and children, it did not improve autism symptoms so the researchers concluded that it was not helpful. It wasn’t that it did nothing; it just didn’t do what they had hoped it would. Other studies, on the other hand, did show that parent mediated interventions improved autism symptoms in the first few years after a long-term intervention. But the original researchers didn’t stop there. They kept following these toddlers through school age to find out if it helped over the long run rather than the short run. Of great importance to the autism community, it did. What was not seen immediately following a yearlong intervention was seen six years later. The results showed improvement in social communication and repetitive behaviors, which is huge to families. This was not a reversal, not a cure. But that’s a major finding.
The parent component was used because these toddlers spend most of their time with their parents. The skills that they learn at these early ages need to be generalized as much as possible so they need to be delivered in different settings: home, bedtime, bath time, at the grocery store, it’s an around-the-clock process. Because parents are involved, the findings of parent-mediated interventions do not mean that most parents are normally doing anything wrong. Or that without this specialized training to help their child, they are useless. It means that during preschool, intervention needs to be intense. It needs to be done in multiple settings. Clinicians can only do so much. Teaching parents to work on skills with their toddlers is crucial. Parents may think they know it all, but they don’t. They need help. They have all sorts of different situations with work, home, other children, family members and living situations. That doesn’t make them less than super. It makes them human.
One of the things that continues to push lawmakers and insurance companies towards coverage of these interventions is whether or not the gains made directly at the end of the intervention period can be maintained later. This is only done through a longitudinal design where a person is followed for many, many years. They are rare but they have been done. The important findings of the study published recently were that the improvements seen right after the end of the original study were sustained six years later. These improvements were seen in social communication, as well as in repetitive and restrictive behaviors, i.e., the core features of ASD. Early intervention can make a lifetime of difference. This is the first study to demonstrate that using this type of research design, which clinicians tend to take the most seriously. That’s a powerful message and it shouldn’t be lost underneath terrible headline language.