One of the most significant stressors for families is extent of behaviour problems exhibited by children with developmental disabilities. These affects parental efficacy and parent-child relationship which are important variables for optimal parenting (Hastig and Brow, 2002).

The aim of the present study was to examine the effectiveness of parent management training to increase child-parent relationship and parental self-efficacy of mothers with autistic children.

30 mothers of children with autism (17 in experimental group and 13 in control group) were included. The experimental group participate in parent management training sessions includes behaviour modification techniques for 6 weeks. The scales of this research were Parenting Self-Agency Measure (Dumka, Storerzinge, Jackson and Koosa, 1996) and Parent _Child Relationship test (Pianta, 1994). t test were used to compare the meanings of pre-tests and post-tests.

The results indicate that there was significant differences between parenting self-efficacy (p < ./05) and parent-child relationship (p < ./001) scores. The experimental group's parental self-efficacy and positive parent-child relationship were significantly higher than control group and parent management trainings increase those important variables in mothers of children with autism.

Parent management training programmes can enhance parental self-efficacy and parent-child relationship and prevent many problems in families with autistic children.