February 2012
Feelings about parenting a child with special needs.
Who cares for the Parents?
A parent’s reaction to their child’s developmental disability varies between individuals. I remember feeling very early on ‘why me, why my child?’ and then seemed to progress between shock, anger, sadness and eventually adjusting to my son’s disability. It does not mean I am never sad, or even embarrassed at times, but I continue to try and look at the many positives my family have.
We can potentially go in and out of a kind of ‘chronic sorrow’ and for some this lasts longer than others. I think I ‘grieved’ for about 18 months and for some time still experienced events that would trigger my emotions, such as statement reviews, or parent’s evenings (at mainstream school especially)!
Research tells us that parenting a child with special needs can bring higher levels of stress than other families and can bring a low quality of life, many pressures and demands, exhaustion, coupled with varying levels of support the parents have around them.
Many support mechanisms are out there such as local support groups, family, close and understanding friends and professionals they engage with and whether the parents take extra good care of themselves individually and make time as a couple. We also have to remember that mothers and fathers may not ‘grieve’ at the same time or at the same intensity or same way. We are all different.
HOPE is important and I would like to share how happy and humorous our children are. We thrive on humour in our house! Yes the future may be uncertain when these children are younger, because none of us have a crystal ball to look into, but with parental love, education and social input our children can flourish in the right environment for them.
PARENTS FLOURISH if they are given the appropriate emotional support. This may be obtained from a combination of counselling, support from family, friends and support groups near you. I had 12 months of counselling whilst I was training to qualify as a counsellor and I benefited hugely. It normalised my feelings and gave me many positives, about me and my life, to reflect upon and answers to my personality and how I relate with others. It empowered me to look after myself and showed me that I deserve to relax and be pampered.
If parents are better able to cope the impact is passed to the children and benefits the whole family. Counselling gave me a renewed energy to use when the emotions are triggered, e.g. parents evenings, statement reviews, funny looks from people, etc. I can now recognise my feelings are totally normal for me and use them and sit with them. It is OK to feel vulnerable for our children and with time we can slowly learn to ‘let go’ a little and feel like we have done our best and we are good enough.
Counselling gives us extra coping strategies and builds our confidence as a parent and enables us to move forward in our lives and accomplish the things we want to do. Many people come to counselling not because of their disabled child but want to feel better equipped to deal with the child’s challenging behaviours, relationship difficulties, family, work or life in general. Counselling takes away loneliness and offers people hope if they are willing to engage in their own self-help process.
I hope this has given some families who have had a recent diagnosis some hope, because even if things have been bad, there is always hope, humour and an abundance of laughs along the way.
Julie Wales
Dip Couns, MBacp
Call Julie now on: 0741 265 1894
E-mail: juliewales60@gmail.com