Growing Up, Getting Good
September 10, 2008 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
A new study by sociologists and social work researchers from the University of Chicago and University of Wisconsin-Madison has found that parenting children with disabilities becomes less taxing over time. From today’s Science Daily:
…….over time, parents learn to adapt to the challenges of caring for a disabled child. As these parents age, the study shows, their health more closely mirrors the health of parents with children who don’t have disabilities.
The study, Age and Gender Differences in the Well-Being of Midlife and Aging Parents with Children with Mental Health or Developmental Problems: Report of a National Study, is published in the September 2008 Journal of Health and Social Behavior.
Am only speaking for myself—-but, for Jim and me, parenting has gotten easy over the years. Charlie still requires 24/7 care, still has a tendency for “difficult behaviors,” struggles in activities with his peers. But his understanding and willingness are great and growing; sure he’s a big kid—-taller, bigger, strong than me—-so yesterday, he carried two heavy bags of groceries to the car, put everything away, used the microwave to heat up a snack. He has to get up over an hour earlier to catch a 7.20am schoolbus and, while he’s not thrilled about getting up, he has been doing this, and getting dressed, and walking out the door, and being generally cheery, and us “Schoolbus here” and “School!” During the summer, while my husband endured a serious back injury, Charlie displayed deep degree of patience and understanding about how much more he’d have to do for himself.
Things can get better, maybe not all the time—sometimes is good with me.
Sweet mother of God, praise the researchers from the University of Chicago and University of Wisconsin-Madison.
My daughter has started to clean up after herself without anyone asking. We are holding out hope that she will be the one neat freak in the family.
Cleaning up without being asked to—–wow, not doing that here (yet).
What a relief to hear! I honestly have been wondering how many years off my life this is taking from me. Glad to know it is none!
I’d definitely say that it’s gotten easier over the years. My triplets are 12 now, and they were diagnosed at 20 months. There were years and years where I was sure that I would never get a full night’s sleep, never have a 3 day stretch without a meeting, or never ever have a day without a therapist or worker in the house.
I’m not sure how much of the “ease” that we’re experiencing these days are due to the incredible strides that the kids have made, our greater ability to understand their communication methods, or whether I’m just more used to it and less likely to freak out. Even though we’re in a “bad time” right now with 2 of the children regressing a bit (it’s always 2 or 3 steps forward, one step back), at least now I know that we’ll get things figured out, and that this is liable to be a fairly short period of time. On the downside, I do think that the 10 years of sleep deprivation has had a great affect on my cognition and memory- I’m going back to school in January, and it’s pretty scary as my mind just doesn’t work quite the way that it used to.
I’m thrilled that this study was done- I hope that at some point they’ll also do a study tracking the health of parents with adult “children”. Now that we’re starting to begin thinking about care for 2 of our children after they turn 18 I’m learning a lot more about what caring for a 60 year old autistic adult when you’re 80 is like.
When they were young, I didn’t ask the boys to pick up their toys because they didn’t respond. Years later, I realize they can do chores and have begun asking and teaching them how. I get the boys to bring in the groceries during the summer and help with the trash and laundry. Andy thinks it’s fun to help whereas Ryan is learning it’s a chore.