Augmenting Sibling Support with Parent-Sibling Training in Families of Children with Autism

ABSTRACT

Background: Typically developing (TD) siblings are an important part of the family system, but may show strained relationships in families of children with ASD.

Objective: We augmented a sibling support group with parent-sibling training in which parents learned (through instructions, modeling, rehearsal, and feedback) how to prompt and reinforce prosocial behaviors in their TD children.

Method: We examined the effects of parent-sibling training on parent and TD sibling behaviors in a multiple baseline across families design.

Results: Parent prompting and reinforcement of TD sibling prosocial behaviors increase. TD sibling prosocial behaviors such as sharing with and talking to their sibling with ASD also increased. Broader measures of the sibling relationship showed some improvements.

Conclusion: Findings suggest ways to support families of children with ASD with future investigations of parent-sibling training examining longer intervention, all family members’ adjustment and relationships, and sibling characteristics that influence response to parent-sibling training.

KEYWORDS:

• Autism spectrum disorder
• typically developing siblings
• sibling relationship
• parent intervention

Acknowledgments

We thank Gabby Monsouri, Kyanna Pritchard, and Benjamin Bravo for assisting with parent-sibling training as well as Heni Stambolski and Noellia Santana who assisted with coding. We also thank the families who participated. The first two authors contributed equally to this research.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare they have no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

The authors report no funding of this research.