I admire how you tackle difficult subjects that are rarely discussed anywhere except in clinical terms. Because I trust this magazine's sensitivity, I want to bring a problem to your attention.
I teach elementary school, and one of my seven-year-old students has a father with multiple sclerosis. The disease has increasingly confined him to a wheelchair. During a recent meeting with the boy's mother, she made a desperate appeal for help. On the surface, the child shows no obvious signs of distress. But he cannot accept a father who cannot "play ball" like other fathers, and he resents his mother for being, as he sees it, too focused on caring for his dad.
At school, the boy appears calm and "normal." At home, he is angry and restless. My colleagues and I have not been able to get him to express this unhappiness directly. But through his drawings and occasional remarks—"I don't like Christmas because of the holidays and I have to stay home"; when asked "What is a family for?" he answered "Nothing"—we understand that he hides the problem and wants to escape from it as much as possible.
I have several questions, hoping someone can answer them:
1) How do we help a child whose parent is disabled, especially at such a tender age?
2) How do we support a spouse caring for a disabled partner while raising children?
3) What role can a teacher play—and with what tools—when a student faces this kind of pain?
- Monica, 1999