10. A special needs child is not the result of bad parenting but rather a genetic deviation that, according to Stats Can, over 200,000 families live with on a daily basis.
9. Parents of children with special needs experience the same feelings of loneliness and isolation as their children and often need just as much mental, emotional and physical support that their children require day to day.
8. Although minimizing the problem, i.e. “I’m sure it’s just a phase. My kid went through it too.” may seem like a statement of understanding, it is just considered a more subtle form of rejection of both parent and child.
7. The public narrative, fed by Hollywood depictions of the relationship between a special needs child and their parents as a “learn what love really means,” experience, is vastly different from the private narrative that occurs in the homes of everyday families dealing with the “anger,” “embarrassment,” “despair,” “mind-blowing costs,” and the “difficulty of navigating the school system.”
6. For every 20 individuals who offer their services to parents with children who have special needs, only 1 or 2 offer any real help. “Desperate parents are easy marks…private speech pathologists, osteopaths, naturopaths, developmental pediatricians, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, friends, family-everybody’s got an opinion.”
5. Parenting a special needs child shifts the role of motherhood from nurturer to “über-researcher, activist and tireless networker.” Parents often feel that they loose out on “having fun and playing” with their children because they are too busy shuttling them from appointment to appointment with little to no outside assistance.
4. Marriages can suffer from a lack of attentiveness between partners due to the fact that all of the mental, physical and emotional attention is being paid to the child.
3. The things that parents often find “endearing or lovable” about their special needs child is almost always overshadowed by their child’s very visible and “most mortifying” actions in a public circumstance.
2. Depending on the severity of a child’s developmental disabilities, a parent will often find themselves “whoring after playdates” with other children. This statement begs the question of “What are parents of ‘normal’ children teaching their kids about tolerance and inclusion?”
1. In a Hallmark-esque reflection of raising a child with developmental disabilities, “(We) look at some issues that stress out moms whose kids are typically developing-a kid who talks back or doesn’t do his homework-and know that would be a piece of cake.”
Photography by Carlo Mendoza
This article is incredibly negative, and completely undermines the strength and powerful human spirit of those raising children with special needs. It ignores the fact that there is a lot to be learned from this experience and it can make families and individuals stronger, more sensitive, and more compassionate. It suggests the biggest problem faced by families raising a special needs child is that they will face embarrassment in public, and therefore cannot bond with their child. Anyone with a brain and a heart in this situation loves their child as much as any other parent does and learns to appreciate who their child is as an individual, celebrates their achievements and learns not compare them to others or worry what others are thinking. These are grade-school level life lessons, and yet they seem to have gone right over the author’s head. This article really lacks compassion and sensitivity and promotes hopelessness. Imagine how parents new to raising a child with special needs might feel after reading this.
I have 3 boys, the oldest is a typical 8 year old, the middle is now being investigated from everything from ADHD, Asperger to who know, and the youngest has autism. This article speaks merit and in some cases is dead on what a parent with a special need childgoes through. While I deeply love my boys, I spend my days with Dr appointments, therapy, anger management (for a 7 year old) navigating the school system and now they suggested a parenting group. Oh ya I still have to work. Isolation is common, I have no close friends anymore, because they just don’t understand what i have to go through. People just look at me as I try to deal with my children. People who have the typical child should stop and look at life through my eyes and stop being so quick to judge.