According to Cloud and Townshend (2001) "As a rule, children don't know what they are doing. They have little idea how to handle life so that it works right. That's why God gave them parents - to love them, give them structure and guide them into maturity" (p. 40). Special needs children often require additional nurturing, stricter discipline and setting of limits, and markedly more attention than traditional children. This can sometimes seem overwhelming for the parents, especially if this is there first experience raising a child. Even if there are other siblings, these extra demands can cause great amounts of stress for the entire family system. If the parents are spending too much time dealing with the needs of one child, then the other children may feel neglected and begin acting out just to gain their parents' attention. Then suddenly all of the children are becoming 'difficult' and the parents become increasingly stressed, which in turn inhibits their ability to provide top quality parenting. This is a vicious cycle that can often only be impeded with professional family counseling (Brodzinsky, et. al., 1984).
Theoretical Approaches
The idea that family problems are linked to developmental processes and transitions is critical to the structural family systems theory. For instance, when a family member is either removed or added to the family structure, great disruption can occur. This is true of any family, traditional or otherwise. However, families that adopt a child with DIS are facing potential disruption from both the addition of a new family member and the intrinsic challenges that special needs adoption can present.
According to Vangelisti (2004) in systems theory, "when one or more of the constraining parameters shifts past a certain point, the stable system grows unstable" (p. 290). Therefore any type of disruption in the family dynamic will cause at least some level of instability. Parents of children with SID are constantly trying to keep that dynamic stable, however the nature of the disorder breeds instability. Therefore there is an ongoing conflict in families that are dealing with a special needs child- a conflict between the desire for stability and the inevitability of chaos.
Corey (2002) asserts that, "families can be described in terms of their individual members and the various roles they play" (p. 442). This 'whole is more than the sum of the parts' perspective is at the heart of family systems theory. When one or more family members is having a hard time defining his or her role, and how and where they fit into the larger structure of the family, this is when the system begins to break down. Therefore dealing with a special needs child, whether or adopted or biological, it is important for parents to understand how much of their role is parental in nature, how much is therapeutic, and how much is being 'a friend'. All parents must define these parameters however when dealing with a special needs child, especially when there are other children in the home, these roles can become confused.
Addressing the interactive processes that occur between family systems and their surrounding environments is also a key aspect of family systems theory. This means that it is not only the structure of the family that is important, but also the external interactive processes that shape and define it. Haskins (2003) explains that "family systems theory supports this understanding of sibling relationships as well as parent-child relationships as being an interactive, interdependent network in which the behavior of each individual or subsystem modifies that of the other individuals or subsystems" (p. 337). This is a valid assumption for families in general, who can also be affected by alternative family structures from a comparative perspective, even if they themselves are not directly involved. By this I mean that traditional families cannot help but to compare themselves to non-traditional families, and vice versa. Therefore if, for example, a mother sees her next door neighbor raising a SID child, she may think "She is so strong -- I don't think I could ever do that." This in turn helps to shape her own self-perception, perhaps making her feel that she is weak or uncompassionate by comparison. These self-perceptions could then influence the manner in which she interacts...
Adoption is a boon to birth parents, their children, and to adoptive parents. In many cases, all three parties involved in the process plus secondary parties like relatives and society at large, benefit by an easy adoptive process. As more and more couples turn to adoption as a solution to an inability to bear children or as an alternative to natural childbirth, raising a number of ethical questions. On the
Homosexual Parents on Children Conversations around the appropriateness of homosexual parents adopting, having or even raising children pose the argument of the effects on the children. However, research of the effects is rare, as well as limited in the direct topic. To follow is a review of key pieces of literature discussing the concepts of diverse family environments and the effects the environments. Evidence supports the knowledge that children do not
Retrieved from Dissertation Abstracts International. (Order No. 3132743) In addition to sexual minority stress, same-sex parents may experience stressors that are specific to parenting, similar to the parental stress experienced by heterosexual parents (Lichtanski, 2004). Stress related to parenting can be chronic, as the stressors may be pervasive, ongoing, and require that families adapt to compensate for the effects of the stressors Bos, H.M.W., van Balen, F., van den Boom, D.,
" Indeed, a Danish study according to Kety et al. (as cited in Kalat, 2012) "found schizophrenia in 12.5% of the immediate biological relatives and none of the adopting parents." It can therefore be noted that although only a small percentage of the general population suffers from schizophrenia, having close familial relations with someone suffering from the same does increase an individual's chances of developing schizophrenia. The disorder is thus
Likewise, the study would not include unmarried couples, single-parent homes, or couples without children. With 50 to 60 participants couples gathered and fulfilling the necessary qualifications for division into the two categories, those with a Special Needs child will be identified as the SN group whereas those with a non-Special Needs child will be identified as the SNS group. Statistical analysis will rely on the use of a t-test, an
Of this group. 50% were male, 50% were female, 38% were White, 35% were Black, and 16% were Hispanic. Adoption statistics are difficult to find because reporting is not as complete as it should be. The government spent $2.6 billion dollars to conduct the 1990 Census, but still it under-represented minorities and categorized children as "natural or by adoption" without differentiating, while special laws were implemented to "protect" and
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