Parents & Families

Professionals need to focus their intervention efforts only on the parents, especially the mother, of children with disabilities.

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• fact

Professionals now believe that the family (including extended family) as well as friends should be included in intervention programming for children with disabilities.

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Parents can influence their children’s behavior, but so, too, can children affect how their parents behave. Research shows that some children with disabilities are born with difficult temperaments, which can affect parental behavior.

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The father is unimportant in the development of the child with a disability.

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Parents of children with disabilities are destined for a life of stress and misery.

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Siblings are usually unaffected by the addition of a child with a disability to the family.

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Siblings often experience the same emotional reactions as parents do, and their lack of maturity can make coping with these emotions more difficult.

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Many authorities now agree that professionals should help parents become more involved in making decisions for the family.

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Teachers should respect the privacy of parents and communicate with them only when absolutely necessary—for example, when their child has exhibited serious behavior problems.

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Teachers should initiate some kind of contact with parents as soon as possible, so that if a problem such as a serious behavior infraction does occur, some rapport with the parents will already have been established.

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