What every parent should know…
Having a child receive a diagnosis is one of the more difficult things you will experience as a parent. You will be flooded with a gamut of emotions. You will feel guilty, unsure of what to do next, frustrated, angry and even maybe relief. It is important for you to allow yourself to acknowledge and experience these emotions. Once you’ve done so, there are many practical things you can start to do now!
Become a scientific parent:
Learn all you can! - Make yourself an expert in your child’s diagnosis. To do this, read as much as you can, attend webinars, ask questions.
Experiment! - Experiment via trial and error. What works for one child may not work for another.
Did you know? - There are over 400 individual psychological traits all interacting with each other! it is impossible to try and control or influence them all.
Become an executive parent:
In meetings, appointments and therapy sessions too often parents aren’t actively participating and will remain silent. My advice? Run the meeting if you need to, it is your child – if you don’t understand something, pause the meeting and ask questions!
Every child is different and unique. You are the expert on your child!
There is no silver bullet cure! You are your child’s best advocate!
Practice forgiveness:
Forgive yourself – your children are going to push you into making lots of mistakes every day! Find a way to forgive yourself, learn from the mistakes and be better every day.
Forgive your children – All children are experts in pushing their parents’ buttons! It is their job to push boundaries and a key area of learning! Please remember it is not intentional, their disability is not your fault or theirs.
Forgive other people – Essential to modern day parenting, let alone parenting a child with additional needs. Too often people will give disapproving looks, look the other way or will outright talk down to you about your parenting. It’s natural for resentfulness to build up but do not let it own you!
All parents are shepherds!
An apt parenting analogy is the shepherd and the sheep. The shepherd doesn’t get to design the sheep, the shepherd provides the best pasture and keeps the sheep safe! Parenting is like this. The kids are genetically and biologically designed a certain way and your role is to provide the best environment you can and keep them safe to learn and grow!
Therefore, sit back and enjoy the show!