Brief Report: What Drives Parental Concerns About Their 18-Month-Olds at Familial Risk for Autism Spectrum Disorder?

Bao et al. (2017) asked parents of 18-month-old toddlers who have an older sibling with autism how worried they felt about their child’s development.

The team also measured how stressed the parents felt, how confident they felt in their parenting, and how many words the toddlers could say.

No treatment was given; the researchers simply watched which parent factors lined up with higher concern.

Parents who felt more stressed and less confident reported the strongest worries about their toddler.

Fewer spoken words by the child added to the concern.

In short, parent stress and self-efficacy shaped concern as much as the child’s actual skills.

Laister et al. (2021) flipped the arrow: when preschoolers gained social-communication skills through an ESDM-style program, moms felt less stress later. Together the two papers show a two-way street—parent stress colors concern, and child progress can lower that stress.

Baixauli et al. (2019) widens the lens, finding that children with autism from lower-stress homes have better communication scores at older ages. The toddler signal seen in Bao et al. (2017) appears to echo into childhood.

Dijkstra-de Neijs et al. (2025) sounds a warning: parents of elementary-age autistic children show high depression and burnout. Catching the stress loop early—as Bao et al. (2017) urges—may help prevent this downstream crash.

When you screen a high-risk toddler, ask about mom and dad’s stress and confidence, not just eye contact and words. A quick stress thermometer can flag families who may disengage before therapy even starts. Pair parent support with child goals early; the payoff is both better compliance and, as Laister et al. (2021) shows, later stress relief.