[ guide for the family resulted from studying mother's attitudes and role towards their autistic children [comparison study between Alexandria and Jeddah]]

ABSTRACT

The main objectives of this research were to study the attitudes of the Egyptian mothers and Saudi mothers, and their role towards their autistic children, to know the difficulties which face the mothers in caring of their children, and to prepare a guide for the family to increase its awareness of the ways of early discovery of autism in children. This study was done on an accidental sample of mothers of autistic children. This sample consisted of 100 mothers in Alexandria in Arab Republic of Egypt and 100 mothers in Jeddah in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The data was collected by A questionnaire and personal interviews with mothers. The SPSS program was used to calculate the arithmetic mean, standard deviation, percentage, correlation coefficient of Pearson, test of qui square, and T test. The results of this study revealed that 41% of the Egyptian mothers, and 45% of the Saudi mothers had positive attitudes towards their autistic children. On the other hand, there were 52% of the Egyptian mothers, and 30% of the Saudi mothers had neutral attitudes. There were also 7% of the Egyptian mothers and 25% of the Saudi mothers that had negative attitudes. The study showed that 44% of the Egyptian mothers and 35% of the Saudi mothers had a strong role toward their autistic children. There were also 19% of the Egyptian mothers and 29% of the Saudi mothers that had moderate role, while 37% of the Egyptian mothers and 36% of the Saudi mothers had a weak role towards their autistic children. 1- There was significant difference between the attitudes of Egyptian and Saudi mothers at 0.01 level, while there was no significant difference between their role towards their children. 2- There was significant correlation at [0.01] between the Attitudes of the mothers towards their autistic children as an independent variable and their role [as dependent variable] in teaching, training and getting them ready to be independent members