Lead article - When parents are in denial
Shirley Young
Parents, extended family, friends and professionals use a variety of coping mechanisms in their lives with disabled babies and children. One of the most helpful, but seemingly least understood and most maligned, is denial. It is essential that parents are supported to adopt coping mechanisms or strategies which are healthiest for them and their child. Professionals need to be extremely self-aware and use supervision and support to ensure that they do not adopt coping mechanisms that are detrimental to their effective relationships with parents. Professionals must understand why parents use the strategies they do, and work in a supportive and compassionate way to move them to those which do least harm. They must be absolutely clear about their responsibility not to support strategies that might be working for the parents but which are detrimental to the wellbeing of the disabled child or other children in the family.
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