ABSTRACT
Parental resilience refers to a sensitive and careful parenting in critical situations, such as in diagnostic processes of autism involving children. Parental resilience allows parents to develop a protective relationship that takes the needs of the child and the couple into consideration, and to assimilate the received diagnosis. In the current study the indicatives of parental resilience were investigated through Content Analysis of six interviews with couples having a child with autism. The results showed that (a) the search and attribution of meaning to the characteristics of their child and to the term autism and (b) the capacity to develop an empowerment of their experience were important indicatives of parental resilience involved in the process of assimilation of the autism diagnosis of their child.
Keywords:
autism; parents; couple; resilience; diagnosis