Autism in Children Makes Moms into "Supermoms"

Raising an autistic child is a very daunting task and a full-time job all on its own. Indeed, some mothers find they have to quite their professional jobs just to raise their autistic child. Finding out that your child is diagnosed as autistic can, thus, be heartbreaking and an extremely high-pressure piece of "bad" news.

But newly published studies of 364 mothers of autistic children as compared to a national pool of 62,000 mothers of school-aged children give us some good news.

Although mothers of autistic children are more likely to report having "poor or fair" emotional health themselves than the average mother, they are also more likely to report and demonstrate some absolutely remarkable emotional strength.

"It is a terrifying, horrific time when you realize that your life is never going to be the same again. But it is also a watershed moment when your love for your child becomes more than you ever dreamed it could be," author Christina Adams says. Her son Jonah, once just very bright but "different", was diagnosed as autistic around the time that he turned three. "You take on all these roles. You become an expert on diet, on treatments, on all kinds of things, and you end up fighting battles all the time on your child's behalf because the support systems, which are supposed to be in place to help, aren't there."

Mothers of autistic children are just as likely to have close relationships with their children as are parents of "normal" children, and they are five times more likely to have close relationships with their children than are parents of children with other disorders. One common myth that the new study explodes is the idea that parents of autistic children get angry with their kids a lot more often than average parents. This turns out to be baseless.