Coping Strategies In Parents Raising Children With Disabilities

Decades of research have demonstrated that the parent-child dyad and the environment of the familyâ€"which includes all primary caregiversâ€"are at the foundation of children's well- being and healthy development. From birth, children are learning and rely on parents and the other caregivers in their lives to protect and care for them. The impact of parents may never be greater than during the earliest years of life, when a child's brain is rapidly developing and when nearly all of her or his experiences are created and shaped by parents and the family environment. Parents help children build and refine their knowledge and skills, charting a trajectory for their health and well-being during childhood and beyond. The experience of parenting also impacts parents themselves. For instance, parenting can enrich and give focus to parents' lives; generate stress or calm; and create any number of emotions, including feelings of happiness, sadness, fulfillment, and anger. Parenting of young children today takes place in the context of significant ongoing developments. These include: a rapidly growing body of science on early childhood, increases in funding for programs and services for families, changing demographics of the U.S. population, and greater diversity of family structure. Additionally, parenting is increasingly being shaped by technology and increased access to information about parenting. Parenting Matters identifies parenting knowledge, attitudes, and practices associated with positive developmental outcomes in children ages 0-8; universal/preventive and targeted strategies used in a variety of settings that have been effective with parents of young children and that support the identified knowledge, attitudes, and practices; and barriers to and facilitators for parents' use of practices that lead to healthy child outcomes as well as their participation in effective programs and services. This report makes recommendations directed at an array of stakeholders, for promoting the wide-scale adoption of effective programs and services for parents and on areas that warrant further research to inform policy and practice. It is meant to serve as a roadmap for the future of parenting policy, research, and practice in the United States.

Special Needs Parenting: From Coping to Thriving offers emotional and spiritual resources for the journey of special needs parenting. Sharing personal insights as a theologian and the parent of an adult son with special needs, Rev. Dr. Lorna Bradley offers seven encouraging and practical tools to help the reader: o gain a deeper, grace-filled understanding of God's presenceo process deeply held feelings of grief and guilto discover strategies for patience, self-care, and healthy relationshipso find hope and healingPowerful for the individual reader, the built-in reflection and discussion questions make Special Needs Parenting an ideal, real-life resource for small groups. Special Needs Parenting is a must read for family members, pastors, and any person who works with special needs families. Dr. Bradley explores their challenges, grief, and joy with deep sensitivity, theological depth, and practical advice. A blessing to all who read it and allow their lives to be touched by wisdom born of personal experience and biblical scholarship

It's a fact that children with disabilities are more likely than other children to be living in single-parent homes. If you're raising a child with disabilities on your own'solo parenting'whether by choice or circumstance, you'll find a wealth of support, affirmation, and practical ideas in this guide to living well. This is the first book for solo parents whose kids have a wide variety of disabilities (physical, neurodevelopmental, and psychiatric), and who are widowed, separated, divorced, single by choice, adoptive or foster parents, or military spouses with deployed partners. In Going Solo, Laura Marshak skillfully weaves together extensive interviews and survey results of solo mothers and fathers (and grandparents, too) with reliable coping strategies gleaned from 25 years as a practicing psychologist and specialist in disability adjustment. The book's insightful personal narratives and the author's deconstruction of these to offer universal lessons'from the basic (e.g., practice mindfulness to de-stress) to the profound (e.g., cultivate gratitude as the antidote to resentment)?can help readers assess and transform their own lives for the better. Agencies, extended family, and friends will want a copy of this book, too, to support the solos they care about.

Families of children with disabilities have typically been examined in a negative light, with the majority of research focusing on negative outcomes, such as stress, depression, and anxiety. The purpose of the current study was to examine the experiences of parents of children ages 3 to 12 years old with disabilities from a positive perspective. Specifically, positive perceptions of parenting a child with special needs, use of problem-focused coping strategies, and the quantity and quality of social support sources were examined as predictors of marital adjustment, family satisfaction, and resilience in 84 parents of children with disabilities.-- From the author's abstract.

Various person and situation factors have been examined as they affect coping in parenting a child with a disability. However, little data exists on the extent to which cultural system influences coping of parents from diverse cultural backgrounds. Informed by Lazarus and Folkman's (1984) transactional model of stress and coping, and Triandis' (1995) concept of individualist/collectivist cultures, the current study examined the ways ofcoping of 62 mothers and fathers from two different cultural systems (Anglo-Australian [individualist] and Greek-Australian [collectivist]). The focus of research was to quantitatively identify the coping resources that were antecedents to the selection of coping strategies and to qualitatively examine the subjective experience of parents from two diverse cultural systems caring for a child with a disability. The relationship between coping resources (depression, self-esteem, social interest, marital relationship) and coping strategies (problem-focused, seeking social support, blame self, wishful thinking and avoidance) was examined using a battery of five questionnaires. The subjective experiences of the parents were elicited via semi-structured interviews. Analysis of the data revealed that depression was not associated with any of the coping strategies for either the mothers or the fathers in the sample. For mothers, associations were found between self-esteem and wishful thinking and avoidance, and between dyadic adjustment and blame self. Social interest was not associated with any of the coping strategies for mothers. Level of education made no difference in the use of coping strategies for mothers. For fathers, associations were noted between self-esteem and wishful thinking, between dyadic adjustment and problem-focused coping, seeking social support, wishful thinking and avoidance. Fathers with high education made more use of problem-focused coping and fathers with low education differed in the use of wishful thinking and avoidance from the high education fathers. Mothers and fathers differed in their use of seeking social support as a coping strategy, with mothers seeking more social support than fathers. Cultural differences were found between fathers in the use of problem-focused and wishful thinking and avoidance coping strategies. Anglo-Australians used more problem-focused coping than their Greek-Australian counterparts. Greek-Australian fathers used more wishful thinking and avoidance than the Anglo-Australian fathers. Anglo-and Greek-Australian mothers did not differ in their use of coping strategies. Qualitative findings indicated both etic and emic experiences. Similar sources of stress, appraisals, coping resources and coping strategies characterised both groups' experiences of caring for their child with a disability. For Greek-Australian mothers and fathers, references to family, responsibility and stigma identified their collectivist cultural background. For the Anglo-Australian mothers and fathers, references to work, social networks and marital relationship identified their individualist cultural background. Overall, the results of the present study supported the relevance of the use of coping resources (social interest, self-esteem, depression, dyadic adjustment) in the study of ways of coping with child disability; and, supported the presence of differences in coping, both between gender, and between membership in a culturally diverse system. It is suggested that future research continues to investigate these resources using populations from other cultural groups and longitudinal designs so that their role in influencing coping under lifelong and uncontrollable circumstances with non-normative populations might be better understood. It is further suggested that health professionals take into consideration cultural differences and factor them into the care of culturally diverse families with children with a disability.

THEY SAY I'M SPECIAL: 100 Tips For Raising A Happy and Resilient Child With Special Needs "If you have a child with special needs then you and I are more alike than you may think. Whether your child has a behavioral, cognitive or physical disability the same truth applies. We both know fear, panic and sadness. We both have shed tears over that scary seed planted in the garden of our mind- that things can go wrong with children. Not everyone grows up to be healthy and mobile. Some children get sick and die, others simply never get better..." THEY SAY I'M SPECIAL: 100 Tips for Raising a Happy and Resilient Child with Special Needs is a must-read book for any parent who has ever felt alone in this world. It's for anyone who, despite their struggles, still wishes to lay the foundation for an amazing life for their child. Put simply it is possible to raise a happy and resilient child with special needs. This book shares with you what all the other parenting guides can't or don't: specific guidance, coping strategies and inspirational tips for raising a child with special needs, written from the firsthand experience of a mother who is just like you: wanting to give her child a life full of hope, love, happiness and big dreams. In other words: a beautiful and meaningful future.

All parents experience stress as they attempt to meet the challenges of caring for their children. This comprehensive book examines the causes and consequences of parenting distress, drawing on a wide array of findings in current empirical research. Kirby Deater-Deckard explores normal and pathological parenting stress, the influences of parents on their children as well as children on their parents, and the effects of biological and environmental factors. Beginning with an overview of theories of stress and coping, Deater-Deckard goes on to describe how parenting stress is linked with problems in adult and child health (emotional problems, developmental disorders, illness); parental behaviors (warmth, harsh discipline); and factors outside the family (marital quality, work roles, cultural influences). The book concludes with a useful review of coping strategies and interventions that have been demonstrated to alleviate parenting stress.

"Parenting a child with a developmental disability has its own set of additional challenges or difficulties associated with the child's impairments, which can have a great impact on parents' well-being. The present study sought to assess a range of child functioning domains and parent coping skills in order to understand which child characteristics and parent coping strategies are the most predictive of parent mental health. It was hypothesized that parents of children with more behaviour problems, fewer social skills, and lower adaptive functioning would exhibit more symptoms of depression, anxiety, and hostility (a measure of anger and aggression). Similarly, parents who used more maladaptive coping strategies and fewer adaptive coping strategies were also expected to experience more symptoms of depression, anxiety, and hostility. Using data from the National Early Intervention Research Initiative (NEIRI), this study included 124 parents of children with DD. Multiple regression analyses indicated that child behaviour problems were the strongest child functioning predictor of parent depression, anxiety, and hostility. Children's social skills were a significant predictor of parent anxiety and hostility, but did not significantly predict depression in parents. Social support was a significant predictor of depression, anxiety, and hostility in parents. However, other coping strategies did not significantly predict variance in parent mental health. This study has implications for family-centered intervention services for children with DD and their families. " --