Poster Presentation
Thursday, 20 July 2006
10:00 AM - 10:30 AM
Thursday, 20 July 2006
3:00 PM - 3:30 PM
This presentation is part of : Poster Presentations II
Understanding the Caring Needs of Sexuality for the Adolescent Children with Autism: From Mothers' Experiences
Shu-Chen Wu, MS, Student Counseling Division ,Office of Student Affair, National Cheng Kung University ,Taiwan, Tainan, Taiwan, Bih-Ching Shu, PhD, RN, Department of Nursing and Institute of Allied Health Sciences, College of Medicine, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan, Tainan, Taiwan, and Su-Chen Hsieh, RN, Department of Nursing, Tung’s Taichung MetroHarbor Hospital, Tainan, Taiwan.
Learning Objective #1: understand the caring needs of sexuality for the adolescent children with autism from mothers’ experiences.
Learning Objective #2: understand how these mothers teaching or assisting their autistic adolescent about their gender role.
The purpose of this study was to understand the caring needs of sexuality for the adolescent children with autism from mothers’ experiences. In this study, the depth-interview was used to collect data and grounded theory was applied to analyze data in this study. Eight mothers were recruited who had autistic children aged 13~21 and were those children’s primary caregivers. Each mother was interviewed from 1 to 4 times. Interviews were made at their home. All interviews were tape-recorded, transcribed and reviewed prior to each subsequent interview. All participants were willing to attend this study and informed consent. Four themes about sexuality were emerged through these mothers’ caring experience. They are (a) physical response of sexual stimulus, (b) the concrete meaning of physical senses, (c) the understanding of self experience, and (d) increasing the ability of appropriateness for social norms. From the sexual education, the adolescent’s  awareness of social information is also high lightened by their mothers. The awareness of social information included (a) understanding the experiences and feelings of others, (b) identifying the social meaning of sex/gender role, (c) differentiating social situation, and (d) developing concrete cognitive skills. The results will provide valuable information for health professionals to understand how these mothers teaching or assisting their autistic adolescent about their gender role.

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See more of The 17th International Nursing Research Congress Focusing on Evidence-Based Practice (19-22 July 2006)