Family accommodation refers to ways in which parents modify their behavior to alleviate their child's distress, which is associated with a disorder. In 2019, we published the first paper showing that such accommodation takes place in the context of autism, where parents accommodate their children's restricted and repetitive behaviors. Such accommodation is associated with increased symptom severity and decreased adaptive functioning. In another paper, we found that elevated family accommodation was predictive of disruptive behavior and associated with higher levels of parenting stress.

 

Most recently, we published a pilot intervention study utilizing SPACE, a parent-based intervention with significant empirical support in the context of anxiety disorders, to target family accommodation of anxiety symptoms in the context of autism.

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We are continuing to explore this construct in a number of directions and are currently working on:

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• Understanding broader clinical characteristics associated with family accommodation of RRBs (manuscript in preparation)​

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• A mixed-methods study examining parents' experiences of family accommodation of RRBs (manuscript in preparation).​​

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• An ecological momentary assessment of family accommodation in parents of young autistic children.

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