Family with Children

What are the special burdens of families with children who are disabled?

There are a numerous amount of burdens that face a family which has a child who is disabled and often not able to learn at the same ability of his/her peers. Families first of all have to be faced with the financial burden which the families needs to go through to make sure that the child receives the best care that is possible. A family needs to make sure that their child receives the best education that they can and if that means spending the extra dollar on a better school for their child who may need special attention. As well as spending more on the child's education, the cost of medical bills and medicine may take a role on the education that their children receive. They may have to attend a public school as opposed to a public school where they could possibly receive more attention if money is an issue.

Families also need to become more involved in the schooling of their child. According to the textbook, "Involving and supporting families is likely to be a more powerful intervention than one that focuses exclusively on the child." In other words, if a family is more directly involved in the schooling of their child, the child is more likely to do better in school.

How do parents and siblings respond to the presence of a child with disabilities in the family?

A family will try its best to include the child with special needs and consider them one of the family. Despite this often the siblings feel a sense of not being loved as much as the child with special needs often feels. They sometimes may feel like the child with special needs is the center of attention. Although that is often the case, it is not always. From seeing this myself, I can say that although most of the attention may be centered around the one with the most needs, the siblings are not ignored and are included as much into daily family life as one another.
What I also found was that the parents of children with special needs can suffer from them. In a study I saw that sometimes having a child with special needs can create psychiatric and psychological problems for the parents in the future.