“Like something supernatural in your house”: an interpretative phenomenological analysis to explore the experiences and psychological challenges of parents raising children with autism spectrum disorder
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Parents raising children with ASD face profound psychological challenges. While existing research predominantly focuses on parental distress, opportunities for growth and transformation remain underexplored. Addressing these gaps, this study employs an existential framework and Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis to provide a nuanced understanding of parental psychological experiences, emphasizing how they navigate and transcend the challenges of raising a child with ASD. METHODS: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with four parents (three mothers and one father) of children diagnosed with ASD for at least three years. Participants ranged in age from 31 to 50 years, while their children, all male, were aged 11 to 22 years. The participants represented diverse geographic backgrounds, including Canada, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the United States. RESULTS: The analysis identified two superordinate themes: "From Existential Crisis to Enlightenment" and "Transcending Challenging Experiences." Participants initially experienced an emotional breakdown following their child's diagnosis, marked by grief and uncertainty. Over time, they transitioned from despair to faith, cultivating acceptance and spiritual beliefs as essential coping mechanisms. They also confronted significant emotional challenges, including guilt, fear of death, and communication struggles, ultimately fostering resilience and forming transcendent relationships with their children. CONCLUSIONS: The findings illuminate the dual dimensions of the parental experience, encompassing both distress and growth. This study offers deeper insights into the emotional and existential aspects of parenting a child with ASD and underscores the need for tailored interventions to support parents in navigating these transformative journeys.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".