Article Review: The Impact of Childhood Disability - The Parent's Struggle

A blogger friend who writes at Chase and More shared an interesting article called "The Impact of Childhood Disability: The Parent's Struggle" written by Ken Moses, a psychologist who helps people with crisis, trauma and loss. His article describes the grief that many parents of a child with an unexpected disability experience after receiving the diagnosis. It reminded me of the kind doctor who spoke to us after receiving Matthew's diagnosis. He told us that it was ok to grieve and that it was part of allowing ourselves to let go of the child we thought we were going to have. It was a process that helped us move on to love our child as we would any other child we would have and build new dreams together.

Here is an excerpt from the article that accurately describes the grief that I experienced:

Parents attach to children through core-level dreams, fantasies, illusions, and projections into the future. Disability dashes these cherished dreams. The impairment, not the child, irreversibly spoils a parent's fundamental. heart-felt yearning. Disability shatters the dreams, fantasies, illusions, and projections into the future that parents generate as pan of their struggle to accomplish basic life missions. Parents of impaired children grieve for the loss of dreams that are key to the meaning of their existence, to their sense of being. Recovering from such a loss depends on one's ability to separate from the lost dream, and to generate new, more attainable, dreams.

As disability bluntly shatters the dreams, parents face a complicated, draining, challenging, frightening, and consuming task. They must raise the child they have, while letting go of the child they dreamed of. They must go on with their lives, cope with their child as he or she is now, let go of the lost dreams, and generate new dreams. To do all this, the parent must experience the process of grieving.

Have you read it? What do you think?

A Loss in the DS Community

I continue to be amazed, but not surprised, by the strong bonds formed in the Down syndrome community. Whether it's celebrating the birth of a new baby, celebrating a milestone, deciphering the Early Intervention program, struggling with health issues, or grieving the loss of a loved one, the Down syndrome community doesn't hesitate to offer support, words of wisdom, or encouragement. These are people from different parts of the world. Most have not even met in person and only know each other through blogs or facebook. Down syndrome is the common factor that pulls us all together like one big, wonderful, and diverse family. I feel blessed to be part of this community.

A friend in the blogging community unexpectedly lost her 8-year old daughter, Carly, very recently. I only know the family from reading their blog as Carly and Matthew had one thing in common - Down syndrome. There has been an outpour of prayers and emotional support from their own family as well as the DS community. Michelle at Big Blueberry Eyes has a beautiful idea for the DS community to show our support. Read about her idea on her blog post, Big Blueberry Eyes: Doing Something.

(The button below was designed and provided by Jasmine at Windmills and Tulips.)

"We lost our sweet girl. She is now my sweet angel." - Joany (Carly's mom)

Please keep the George family in your thoughts and prayers as they go through a very difficult time in their lives.