Parents Whose Child Has Recently Been Diagnosed

¶ … Parents Whose Child Has Recently Been Diagnosed With a Disability

Bearing that whenever there is a disability detected within the family, the entire family gets affected, there is need to find out to what extent and how the family members share in the pain and disability of one of them. Disabilities can be from the time of birth or can emerge as the child grows up from accidents or developed complications and diseases. Regardless of he cause, source and course, parents of a child are usually distressed about such disabilities and need the support of the entire family to cope with the depression. There is normally anxiety, fear, denial, guilt, depression and even anger that is manifest among parents of children diagnosed with disability, all of which can degenerate into stress disorders at the long run if not well diagnosed, understood and psychological counseling and other corrective measures taken (Ashun Gupta, 2004:22). These stresses are manifest in a progressive manner due to the daily and frequent demands of care for the disabled child, emotional distress on the parents (maternal depression being common), interpersonal relation problems, adverse social responses like isolation and the financial demands that may accompany the disability.

Thesis

In-depth understanding of the perspective and though process of parents of children recently diagnosed with disability is key to minimizing the traumatic disorders and averting possible self hurting tendencies among the parents and in effect making life easier for the children living with disability as well.

Relevance of the research

There has been evidence of parents adversely affected by the birth of a child with disability or discovery that their child has some form of dissability. Predominantly noted, such parents go through three stages in dealing with this shock in their life. The first stage is the emotional crisis that is evidenced by denial, shock and disbelief. Then the second stage is characterized by feeling of guilt, shame, anger, low self-esteem, overprotectiveness, depression and even rejection of the child in some instance. The third stage is the acceptance stage where the parents come into terms with the reality (Heward W.L., 2010). There is need hence to help the parents get through these stages faster and if possible with lesser pain and this calls for the better understanding of their perspective and thought process especially among those whose children have been diagnosed recently with disability.

Methodology

Study Design

This research will be primarily conducted through explorative research design with the prime focus on the parents' response and perspectives/changing perspectives at the time of the discovery of the disability in their child through the first six months. It will look into the initial responses, the changing perceptions in the process, the effect of the change in the perspective, the adjustment process and the effort employed in these adjustments to the new state of the family. Though the data will be collected from parents only, there will be distinction made between the male and female parents with the indication of the sex in the interview schedules or the questionnaires as this will help the research notice difference in the adjustment of parents, if any, in line with their gender. The data will be collected through the use of questionnaires, interviews as well as observation of the response of the employees to the open office system as compared to the closed office systems.

Data collection instruments

The tools that will be used in the collection of data will be questionnaires, observation and interviews. The questionnaires will be significant in ensuring that the respondents give an honest opinion without fear of the presence of the researchers or victimization since they will be anonymous.

The interviews will benefit the research team in that they will be in a position to observe the body language of the respondents, ask more questions where needed, give the respondent more time where necessary.

The observation will allow the researcher observe the behavior o the sample subject in their daily environment and collect data from the behavior of the subject rather than what they say or write. This will give room for the subjects (parents) to carry on with their life normally as they are under study hence not substantially influencing the data or the outcome of the research.

The questionnaires will be distributed among the parents who have had their children diagnosed with disability over the period not longer than six months in the past. The questionnaires will be divided into three parts covering two months per section to enable the eventual data analysis and interpretation is able to notice trends that the perspectives of the parents take over the six months period. The targeted population here will be at least 200 parents, a process which is bound to take long time as the diagnosis with disability does not happen frequently or on a regular basis.

There will be interviews conducted among at least 200 parents by a team of trained data collection personnel. This will be done at the time of the collection of the questionnaires so that a large number as possible of already identified parents is covered in the interview. This will come hand in hand with the observation which will work in the case of parents who have been freshly furnished with the news of their child having been diagnosed with disability. There will be weekly visits that will last a half a day and the timing will be rampant so as to catch up with varied activities in the homesteads. The behavior pattern will be recorded for six months, or until the sixth month elapses for those parents whom the researchers shall find that they had started the adjustment process months or weeks before the commencement of this research.

There will be basically two variables in this research, the independent variable will be the presence of the disabled child in the family, a condition that though triggers the reactions to be studied, remains unchanged once it is in the family. The dependent variable is the parents' perspective at the onset of the disability of their child. The perspective dependent variable as it will be expected to be changing over time as the parents go through several steps in coming to terms with the disability in the family. This will be the prime focus of the study as it will be paramount to note the changes and how these affect the relations of the parents with the child and with others.