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Extraordinary Dads, Special Kids
Meeting the Needs of Special Needs Children
By Jenny Rackley
As any father will tell you, parenthood is a big undertaking. From the moment a child is born, a parent's life changes irrevocably. Fathering the special needs child is even more of a formidable task. The challenges encountered are diverse, depending on the disabilities or difficulties the child has.
In the article Welcome to Holland, by Emily Perl Kingsley, having a special needs child is likened to planning a trip to Italy and instead finding that you are in Holland. You don't see the people you expect, nor speak the language. Your friends are not there. Holland has a different pace, is not showy like Italy, and certainly wasn't the trip you were promised or expecting.
Families of special needs kids feel this isolation intensely. "The support systems for these families are smaller than they are for other families," says Dr. Vicki Turbiville, Project Director at The Beach Center on Families and Disability. Babysitters may not be able to cope with the special needs of the child. Friends and extended families often are not there or don't understand. Families of special needs kids are all of a sudden revolving in a different world - a world of service providers and therapists and Individualized Education Plans. The problems will often never go away. One parent says "People are very sympathetic when your child is ill once or twice. But when you are talking about your child's special needs day in and day out for years, people tend to tune you out, and think you are just complaining."
Fathers are isolated even further. Dr. Turbiville states that systems, interventions and support are all built on "mother models." Many service providers want to deal with moms, not dads. They can't or won't schedule appointments and meetings at times when fathers can attend. Even when fathers do attend, dads are often all but ignored (except when discussions of bills come up).
Steve Fischer vividly remembers the moment he learned of his daughter's cerebral palsy and developmental and other disabilities. He wrote, in Exceptional Parent (8/94), "When the physician walked in to deliver the message he looked squarely in my wife's eyes. Even though we were sitting side by side, his eyes never made contact with mine. ... The physician ... no doubt recognized the pain in my beautiful wife's eyes. The fact remained however that I, the father, was also in a state of complete emotional collapse. The failure of this particular physician to even make eye contact with me seemed to send the message that ... I was not hurting."