Empowering Culturally Diverse Families of Young Children with Disabilities: The Double ABCX Model Yaoying Xu 1,2 Received: 23 October 2006; Accepted: 5 December 2006 Many culturally diverse families and their young children with disabilities or delays are not provided appropriate early intervention/early childhood special education services, especially not in a culturally sen- sitive and meaningful context. Families with diverse backgrounds often feel helpless and stressful because their values are not respected, concerns are not identified, and therefore their needs are not met due to the lack of support from appropriate resources. The purpose of this article is to provide a positive strategy to empower families of young children with special needs and who are from culturally diverse backgrounds through a family-centered, strength-focused family system model: Double ABCX model. Procedures of implementing the double ABCX model was described and discussed. Supported by previous research and the current case studies, the double ABCX family adaptation model has found to be an effective approach to serving diverse families of children with disabilities. KEY WORDS: family empowerment; cultural diversity; coping strategies; ABCX model. BACKGROUNDS The population of children and families in the United States who receive early intervention or early childhood special education services is becoming increasingly diverse. Families nowadays in the United States are diverse in ways such as culture, sexual orientation, economic status, work, religious beliefs, and composition. Take the composition of families as an example: single-parent families, families of divorce, blended families, multigenerational families, extended families, homeless families, migrant fami- lies, and gay and lesbian families as well as non- biological kin rearing children represent some of the diversity in families (Christian, 2006; Cartledge, Kea, & Simmons-Reed, 2002). Integrated with the diverse family composition is the cultural/ethnic aspect of family characteristics. It is estimated that by the year 2050, half of the U.S. population is projected to be of Latin American, African American, Native Ameri- can, or Asian/Pacific descent (Cartledge et al., 2002). Working with young children with disabilities and their families from culturally and linguistically di- verse backgrounds can be very challenging for early interventionists and early childhood special education teachers. Because of the complexity of family com- position and sensitivity of cultural issues, it is risky or even dangerous to over-generalize about family needs, priorities, values, and beliefs. Even for families from the same cultural backgrounds, no two families are exactly alike (Cartledge et al., 2002). In collaborating with families from culturally and linguistically different backgrounds, so often early interventionists/early childhood special educa- tion teachers move from one end of the continuum to the other: either playing as the authority to step in and make all decisions for the child and the family or withdraw from the family in fear of making mistakes 1 Department of Special Education and Disability Policy, Virginia Commonwealth University, 1015 W. Main St, Oliver Hall Room 4071, P.O. Box 842020Richmond, VA 23284, USA. 2 Correspondence should be directed to Yaoying Xu, Department of Special Education and Disability Policy, Virginia Common- wealth University, 1015 W. Main St, Oliver Hall Room 4071, P.O. Box 842020Richmond, VA 23284, USA., e-mail: yxu2@vcu.edu Early Childhood Education Journal, Vol. 34, No. 6, June 2007 (Ó 2007) DOI: 10.1007/s10643-006-0149-0 431 1082-3301/07/0600-0431/0 Ó 2007 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC