Guilt

Parents of students with disabilities often feel guilty and are in denial about their child’s needs and ability levels. Many blame themselves for their child’s disabilities. There was a couple that had a son with a traumatic brain injury. After speaking to the mother, I found out that the father and the child were in tragic accident. The child suffered massive head injures, and the accident was the father’s fault. I wondered how the couple’s relationship continued after an accident where the father was found at fault, and the child sustained damage to the brain. The family appears to be happy and extremely supportive of their son. I asked the mother how did their marriage survive this tragedy without overwhelming guilt and blame? She told me that they are Christians, and that they believe in the power of prayer. She told me that they focus on positive factors such as: their son is alive and healthy, they have been blessed with a new baby, and their son has two supportive parents that will help him deal with any challenges that he may face in the future. This is a remarkable story, but there are others that are not as great. During my first year teaching, I taught an 8 year old girl with mild intellectual disabilities. Her mother would enter my classroom frequently and unannounced in a rude and disruptive manner. She would often question my ability to teach her child, and embarrassed me in front of my support staff. I worked very hard with her child, and her daughter was making drastic improvements in reading comprehension and mathematics. I could not figure out why this mother was so dissatisfied. I scheduled a meeting with her former teacher who told me that she did not have similar experiences with the mother. However, she shared some very useful information with me that helped me to understand the mother’s behavior. The student’s former teacher told me that at the last IEP meeting, it was revealed that the mother and father were both successful attorneys, and their older son was gifted. Their daughter was the result of an unexpected pregnancy, and the mother became severely depressed during the pregnancy which resulted in her heavy consumption of alcohol. The student’s challenges were a direct result of her mother’s alcoholism during the pregnancy. The guilt that this mother felt was so overwhelming that she constantly found someone to blame for her daughters condition. How do you deal with parents when they constantly lash out at you because of their guilt regarding their child’s special needs?