Emotions

 I am currently working on a Master's degree in Curriculum and Instruction and with this class I have chosen to take my passion of creating an after school program for children with cognitive learning disabilities and research different topics to gain credibility with this new program. As I was researching I came across an article called Working with Families of Disabled Children in this article it helped describe the emotions of a parent who has a disabled child. It was so true I thought I would share so that you would have a small glimpse into a parent's heart.
Self-Blame/Mourning
"It has been reported in the psychological literature that the birth of a
handicapped child, or the acquisition of a handicap, precipitates a period of
mourning, much as the more familiar experience of death does. Stages of
mourning are identified as denial, anger, open grief, and, finally, resolution
and going on with life [Kubler-Ross 1969]. The assumption is that mourning
is time-limited; going on with life implies a once-and-for-all resolution. Onceand-
for-all solutions seem quite superficial when applied to the complex tasks
of parents of handicapped children. Parents often need continuing help to
understand their own idiosyncratic responses to their child's needs while they
are helped to meet the needs of the child. For example, each stage of the
child's life requires parents to reconsider expectations of performance and
adjust to them [Rappaport 1965]. As families move through the normal
experiences of life, parents have to reassess and reintegrate continually the
meaning of the handicap, for themselves and for the child. This, in turn,
suggests that mourning may be an indefinite process that consumes considerable
quantities of psychic energy. Moreover, if one has not come to terms
with self-blame resulting from having taken drugs or medication or smoking
while pregnant with the child, or whatever real or imagined self-badness or
weakness one believes may have contributed to the handicap, the energy
requirement may become overwhelming. The vagueness of the diagnosis of
learning disability reinforces parental fears. Each one of the imagined causes
mentioned above can be translated by the parents into a form of neglect on
their part. The quixotic persistence of learning disability reinforces the
chronic state of mourning, partly because of repeated hopes that arise with
spurts of accomplishment or creativity in scattered areas of the child's
functioning. Each hope is battered by subsequent failures in academic and
social spheres. The daily experience of parents may be described as a constant
process of adjusting to new, unpredictable realities. Whether these are hopeful
or hurtful experiences, the inability to predict behavior based upon normative
outcome expectations creates in the parents a sense of loss of control of their
lives."

Reference:
Vigilante, F. (1983). Working with Families of Learning Disabled Children. Child Welfare, 62(5), 429-36. Retrieved from ERIC database.