The Meaning of the Child in Families Living with a Child Diagnosed with Autism: Security, Exploration and Therapy.

Chapter 12 illustrates how the Meaning of the Child Interview (MotC) can be employed in a compassionate way to understand and assist families where a child has a diagnosis of autism. It demonstrates how the MotC can help to illuminate the challenges parents face when their own childhood experiences offer an inadequate working model for them to be parents. Parents are not simply determined by their history but reflect on their experiences and make explicit choices about what to repeat and what to change or discard. Societal autism discourse makes it harder for parents to see themselves as able to influence the lives of their children, encouraging mechanistic, impersonal and non-mentalising understanding of their behaviour. We look at how both insights are operationalised in a multi-family intervention offered to these families, known as SAFE (Systemic Autism Related Family Enabling). A brief overview of SAFE will be offered and then a specific focus on how the MotC framework was employed in a collaborative exploration with families and to guide the family therapy. The approach draws from Attachment Narrative Therapy and takes the MotC from simply assessing to re-storying the relationship in more life-affirming and less defended ways.