Experiences of Parenting Child with ASD during COVID-19 Pandemic: A Cross-Sectional Study

Introduction: Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a disorder with a set of behavioural expressions. The family life is struggling for having child with ASD. Parenting of autistic child has negative parenting consequences comprising elevated parents-stress and reduced their efficiency as compared to parents of normally developing children. Our aim of this study is to study the experiences of parenting child with ASD during the situation of COVID-19. Method: This cross-sectional descriptive survey was conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic between June and September 2020 on the families of autistic children. The Autism Family Experience Questionnaire (AFEQ) was adopted from the reference. It was translated from English to Arabic version by the researchers included at the study. Then, the linguistic validation was carried on ten volunteers for investigating the equivalence of concepts inside the questionnaire. Results: A total of 65 families who participated in the survey; the number of families of autistic male kids in the study was (46) (70.8%). In contrast, the number of families of autistic female kids who participated in the survey was (19) (29.2%). The analysis demonstrated that the weighted averages from all four-themes of the AFEQ lies within the high levels at the likert-scale, which indicated never. It means the negative outcomes resulted from the most chosen statements of AFEQ items that is might be reflecting the worsened situations during the pandemic of COVID-19. Conclusion: Children with ASD are undoubtedly more vulnerable from the social distancing period because of the pandemic.