Working With Family In Denial Summary

Article Review

Summaries of articles

In the article, Working with Families: Rethinking Denial, “in denial” was believed to be the action of parents failing to accept their children’s disabilities. The term “in denial” originates from Kubler-Ross (1969). It refers to the stages of grieving: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance (Kubler-Ross, 1969). The connection to disabilities and grief is that they both involve the stages of acceptance, in which, they are expected to reach that final stage. When parents discover that their child will consider different the ideology of perfection is replaced with fear of the unknown. Parents may experience their own form of grief, Howard, Williams, Port, & Lepper (1997), made the suggestion

Many families are expected to accept and process the information that they are given the same way as the professional that is working with them. It is important to take the family’s feelings and emotions into context when presenting them with the limitations that their child will experience in their life. A professional’s perspective can come off as judgmental and this can result in a lack of interest in the hopes that parents have for their children. The difference between parents and professionals when working together is that professionals see the diagnosis as a stepping stone for the work that will be needed for the child. Some parents have multiple children, jobs, and other responsibilities that can hinder them from spending long hours doing activities that therapists and other professionals suggest to them (Fialka, 2000). It is important to not pass judgment on families when they challenge the suggestions but to take into perspective how the family is feeling. According to Gallagher, Fialka, Rhodes, & Arceneaux (2002), some suggestions for professionals are: show support to families’ wishes for their child, suppress judgmental behavior, be patient, use the time that it takes for the families to get acclimated to build trust, and educate other professionals and families

It is an emotional rollercoaster for families and sometimes their reactions to the news can be misinterpreted for something completely different. Professionals can be very overbearing in some cases because they don’t need the time to accept what is taking place. The comparison of grieving to disabilities is understandable only because of the stages that families can experience when they are informed that their child will be experiencing hardships. Acceptance is difficult when parents have the connotation that their child is “normal” in a sense. The ideology of having “the perfect child” can seem like a death for some families when they have to come to terms with their child’s disability. Working with professionals can seem overwhelming to most families because they have to collaborate and brainstorm with multiple people to gain an understanding of the situation that they are facing. Professionals can learn from parents and vice versa; feelings are real and emotions are real so they should be respected and accepted when dealing with a stressful situation such as disabilities. This affects the field of child and family studies because sometimes it is easy to become judgmental of families without taking into context the level of stress that families are facing. This information will be