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Parenting a child is already hard and has plenty of difficulties associated with it. But for a parent of a child with special needs, those difficulties are multiplied. Feelings of stress, fear, grief, and guilt become the norm, and isolation seems like your only friend.
‘Special needs’ is an umbrella term that encompasses anything from a minor learning disability to more complex disorders.
Labels aside, we understand how you feel, and we have a few words we want to tell you.
Parenting Challenges
Finding resources
Parenting a child with special needs requires you to educate yourself about the disability that your child has so that you can find ways to cope with it. You’ll also find yourself spending a lot of time researching and trying to locate effective treatments for your child’s disability.
Coping with demands
Parents of children with special needs have to cope with the physical and emotional demands of their child, let alone their own. Constant visits to medical providers, school personnel, therapists, and advocates frequently are a must.
Finance
Signing up your child to school intervention programs and finding appropriate accommodations are also among these challenges. Furthermore, parents are required to spend a significant amount of money on these interventions, even the treatments that aren’t covered by health insurance.
Dealing with disciplinary issues
A special needs child may be a child that suffers from behavioral issues like ADHD, which gives the parent a whole new category of challenges to deal with, as children with such disabilities are less likely to respond to traditional discipline.
To deal with such behavior issues, parents are forced to look for specialized methods that are catered to the child’s disability, which requires a lot of patience, creativity, and flexibility from the parent, and most of the time these aren’t the most comfortable personality traits one can withhold to when under a substantial amount of stress.
Parents also face developmental issues that may change some of their visions for the future and introduce a whole new educational and caring parenting challenges.
Dealing with “exclusion”
Behavioral diagnoses such as down syndrome and autism tend to remove children from the mainstream and have them looked upon differently by society.
What parents can do in similar situations is to be fierce advocates for their children so that they receive proper therapy, schooling, and also the feeling of inclusion that every human need and deserves to feel
Extra efforts with schoolwork
Parenting a child with learning disabilities such as ADP or dyslexia, you’ll find that your child struggles with schoolwork despite his intellect, which forces you to look for learning strategies tailored to the child’s potential and that won’t cause him/her any self-esteem issues or feelings of inferiority among other students.
You also need to have unyielding persistence if you have a learning-challenged kid because you’re going to have to spend some time working with your child on his disability just like his/her teachers at school to ensure that the child gets the education he/she needs.
How to Overcome Such Challenges?
Build a network – you are not alone
Please understand that you’re not alone. There are plenty of people that are going through and trying to deal with the very same challenges you’re going through. Find those people and try to build a strong network with them for each separate diagnosis.
We, as humans, can’t go through this world alone, and the difficulties associated with parenting a child with special needs tempts a lot of parents to make isolation their home. As a result, the parent becomes unable to provide the support that the child requires.
Don’t go that route; there are plenty of people who are in the same boat and are looking for the same support you may be looking for now. Help them, and they can help you, so that life becomes more comfortable for you, them, and all of your beautiful children.
Take care of yourself
Please understand that it’s not all about the kids. You can’t provide care if you’re not taking care of yourself first. We know that it’s hard to care for yourself when your child is in need, but you can’t help someone if you require help.
We’re not telling you to leave your child at home while you take an extended vacation somewhere, not at all. You can go out now and then to play your favorite sport or on a date night.
Get your friends involved – Ask for help
You can ask friends to bring meals by your house when you’re too busy to cook or grab lunch on your way home. Do whatever makes you happy and take care of yourself so that you can provide the care and love that your child needs from you.
Stop feeling guilty
Beloved, we’re are only human, we’re not perfect, no one is. We all make mistakes, and we can get caught up in a moment of anger, guilt, or desperation for help that may lead us to think and do unreasonable acts.
Maybe you’ve missed an essential appointment for your child, maybe your child had a rough day at school, and you don’t have the mental capacity to ask him/her what’s wrong due to the rough day you’ve had at work yourself.
Quit beating yourself up as it won’t fix anything. Move on and try to change whatever behaviors or mistakes you’ve made, but expect to make new ones now and then. Again, we’re not perfect, and we never will be.
Realize, that you’re a warrior
Lastly, realize that you’re a superhero. You may not be able to able to fly or run faster than the speed of light, but you’re a superhero in every sense of the word.
Your ability to work your way with compassion, love, and hard work through difficult situations that most parents don’t have to deal with is a superpower, and with high power comes great responsibility. Stay positive, stay persistent, and be the hero that you are.
