Quality of life at home toolkit

Coping with behaviours that challenge within the home and navigating family life can be overwhelming at times. You might find yourself experiencing this more regularly if you’re a parent or carer of an autistic child or young person. It’s important to recognise that you’re not alone. We’ve been working with parents of autistic children and young people to identify the everyday challenges families like yours struggle to deal with.  

That’s why we’ve created our quality of life at home toolkit. This series of five animated films provides advice and guidance on managing the emotional needs of autistic children and young people. 

 Understanding behaviour: the iceberg model

An iceberg is a way of thinking about what unmet physical or emotional needs could be causing behaviours that challenge. Use the iceberg model to consider what may be triggering your child’s behaviour to improve their, and your, quality of life. 

Emotional needs: autonomy

Advice on the need for autonomy – the capacity to decide for ourselves. As your child grows, encouraging their ability to make free, healthy, autonomous choices is key to their psychological and emotional development. This can also help ease some parenting stress levels. 

Emotional needs: relatedness 

Our natural need to feel connected to those around us and establish close bonds is the emotional need for relatedness. Use the model of the four Ss – safe, seen, soothed, and secure – to help ensure that your child feels connected to their family and maintains secure and strong relationships.    

Emotional needs: competence 

Nurturing the feeling of competence in our children, where they have opportunities to match their skill levels to activities and tasks that are important, leads to psychological growth, wellbeing and improves their quality of life.  

Family conflict 

The drama triangle can be used to think about how parents tend to take up typical patterns of behaviour when confronted with challenging situations – the victim, the rescuer and the persecutor – and how we can break free of them.