International Women's Day - Celebrating Disabled Mothers and Mothers of Disabled Children

Mary_Scope

Part 2 - Navigating Motherhood With A Disability with Sarah
Part 3 - Challenging Attitudes Towards Mothers of Disabled Children with Jenna

It is International Womens Day this Saturday and so in the leadup to that, this weeks focus is going to be on celebrating disabled mothers and mothers of disabled children.

Motherhood is a journey that is packed full of unique challenges and joys. But, when combined with disability (either your own or your child's) those experiences are intensified.

It is a journey that is often filled with overcoming barriers, relentless advocacy, managing multiple roles and needs and more.

But, it can also often be filled with unconditional love and extraordinary amounts of strength and resilience.

Throughout the week we will be hearing from different women who have different experiences and discuss transforming attitudes, challenging stigma and stereotypes and sharing words of wisdom.

If you're a disabled mother or a mother of a disabled child, what has been your journey? How can we better support disabled mothers/parents of disabled on the community?

figraspberry41

Hello Mary,

I was not aware that I was a disabled mother until I was almost 60years old! It was rather late in life to discover my own disabilities (although I had suspected that I may be Dyslexic, but this was not proven along side the fact of being Autistic until my diagnosis). However, my son (35years this year) displayed behavioural difficulties from an age of about 14 months, just after I was returning to full time work. Unfortunately, I was not supported (by my then husband), who thought my son's behaviour was due to my lack of parenting skills and my inability to control his behaviour as he seemed only display these behaviours with me. I took my concerns to school long before he started school, only to be treated as a neurotic mother!

Once my son started school, it became apparent that his behaviour was spilling over into school time. I had also mentioned his behaviour to the GP and after sometime and increasing concerns from school, he went through the school psychologist, and eventually he was seen by a paediatric Community Physician, who referred him to The Maudsley Hospital in London. My husband was most annoyed and continued to blame me. I phoned the Hospital in shear desperation and the Registrar phoned my husband an invited him to a case conference after a long wait plus initial assessments in London (also, much to my husband's discussed). My son was diagnosed with Oppositional Defiant Behaviour, A.D.H.D and Dyslexia. At this stage he was only 7 years old. I still had to battle to get him seen by a Psychiatrist locally (by this time we had moved to Sussex). It took another two years before the Consultant would agree tot treat with Ritalin) because my husband would not agree to him having medication, as far as he was concerned, his behaviour was down to my inability to control my son. Eventually, he agreed for my son to 'try' the medication and it was successful for him. He was at secondary school (college) before he was diagnosed with Dyslexia and that enabled him to qualify to be statemented and receive extra support at school. At further education college, he managed with a lot of determination, hard work and several years repeating exams etc… to get sufficient credits to get him to University, where he gained his full degree in IT. This proves that people with severe disabilities , given the right support can achieve well in education.

As a parent of a disabled child, it was distressing at not being believed regarding my son's behaviour and he was very difficult to manage, since Oppositional Defiant Disorder (was not recognised thirty-five years ago, as it is today), but also because I was treated like a weak, poor, ineffective mother by his father. I feel for any mother going through this type of rejection and that they are treated as though they are the one's with the problem, which of course they are in as much as they are often the one's trying to cope and manage their child's behaviour. It was very difficult trying to explain to other parents that your child's behaviour (or lack off) is actually due to chemical imbalances in his brain that cannot easily be "switched off" or curtailed in some way.

There seems to be many more children being diagnosed with these behavioural problems these days to the point where you wonder what a 'normal' child behaves like. Many of the people I know, either have a child with similar disabilities or knows someone else who does.

As a child myself, I was considered to be the 'thick' or 'daft' child, slow to learn and 'clumsy', Dyslexia was not known as a condition, or if it was known about, it certainly was not recognised a a Bonafede condition.

It was only through my own investigations (even though my son was now adult) that I looked further into the traits of A.D.H.D / Autism and identified many of the traits in myself. It took a lot of persuading and waiting to be diagnosed myself as being Autistic and only thanks to the University that granted me an assessment to establish that I am also Dyslexic. Rather late in the day to get support with educational needs but never the less a defined diagnosis.

Although, I worked in a professional role and had somehow survived for over forty years, when it came to advising my employers of my diagnosis and having gone through the Access to Work Assessment, my employers were very slow to provide the equipment required and when they did failed to provide me with the proper and adequate training to use the computer to do the work required (although my job was mostly practical/ 'hands on'). As a result, I was not able to meet their IT requirements but not for a lack on my part to request the proper training and support. As a result, I took early retirement (which I neither wanted to do, nor could financially afford to do) and returned to work two grades below which I had been working at and yet still Management failed to adequately support my needs and provide the training to enable me to use the software on my computer to do the tasks required of me. It caused me so much stress and anxiety that eventually, I resigned. From my personal experience this kind of lack of support for Management to provide the training to go with the equipment set me up to 'fail' at my job as I was seen as an expendable individual that was costing money to provide the Reasonable Adjustments fully. Yes, they did provide a larger screen computer with my own monitor and headphones but this is very unhelpful if the software added to my computer I still could not use due to not receiving adequate training to enable me to use it.

My personal experiences have shown that there is little support for mothers with disabled children from schools, Nurseries etc…. Often husbands or partners do not recognise their child's difficulties and choose to blame their wife's or partners ability to parent their child and schools seem to treat mothers' as being paranoid or neurotic regarding their child's difficulties or challenging behaviours.

I wonder how much training teachers, care givers and others receive to identify a child's behaviour and identify with even mild symptoms / traits of the 'hidden disabilities' that if adequately and properly diagnosed can support that child through schooling and understanding the needs of that individual.