NO MATTER HOW old a child is when he or she becomes disabled, mothers and fathers experience a complex array of feelings ranging from love, concern, and anxiety, to guilt, bitterness, and resentment. Even in parents whose children are fully-grown and independent, the onset of illness and disability can easily rekindle earlier feelings of maternal or paternal protectiveness.
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| Having A Child With MS |
They want to keep their child safe from harm and do whatever they can to ensure that he or she will be all right. Watching their child cope with a progressive disease can be a very painful experience for parents, their inability to protect and defend the child causing them to feel helpless, frustrated, and often guilt-ridden. Knowing that genetic susceptibility is a factor in MS, some parents also worry that they somehow caused their child to become disabled and wonder what they could have done to prevent it.
Parents may find themselves, in their middle or later years, providing some combination of living quarters, financial support, physical care, or emotional support to an adult child whom they had once assumed would be independent and part of a family of his or her own. They may feel fortunate to be able to offer one or more of these types of support, while at the same time resenting the disruption of their well-deserved retirement, and worrying about the impact on their own health and financial security.
Parents may also feel resentment toward a child's spouse who has left the marital relationship and "returned'' the disabled spouse to the home and care of the parents; although a spouse's role can be ended, the parent feels like a parent forever. This change is sometimes further complicated by grandchildren who, because of their parent's disabilities, may need more than the usual amount of grandparenting. In this situation the grandparents face the delicate challenge of finding a way to participate in the care and nurturance of their grandchildren without overstepping the boundary between grandparent and parent.
Aging parents may suddenly find themselves concerned about the financial security of a child (and grandchildren) they had always assumed would be independent. The world of insurance, government subsidies, trusts, and taxes can be overwhelming to even the most financially astute. Parents, like everyone else, tend to put off thinking about money and the future simply because it is too stressful to do so. Fortunately, there are resources to help with the kind of financial planning that can protect the security of a disabled child and relieve some of this stress. To find out more, you can check out Having A Child With MS.