When you’re caring for a chronically ill child, there are so many layers of stress, some days feel as if you’re being pulled down by a current in an ocean of impossible.
All she wants to do is go to school like the other kids. All you want for her is to be able to do just that. But your daughter has a chronic illness that demands all of her energy and most of your time. Between doctor visits, blood work, diagnostic testing and specialist care, there just simply aren’t enough hours in the day for school work.
Human beings are wonderfully diverse. We come in different sizes, shapes and colors and have varying interests, instincts, talents and drives. Diversity makes us stronger together than we could be on our own.
Parenting doesn’t come with an instruction manual. And when your child is having a meltdown in the mall, you probably wish it did. Sometimes, a just-right kid’s book, written to and for your little one, does more to help hone emotional health in your child than all the parenting volumes in the local library.
Raising children always comes with unforeseen joys and trials — it’s a role that innately bears both challenges and triumphs. When a child is diagnosed with a chronic disease or an illness that lasts for three months or more, it can feel overwhelming.1 However, for many families, living well within the chronic illness can be a source of success and triumph in spite of the obvious challenges.
Your child’s brain injury can seem overwhelming, and it’s easy to feel helpless in the face of it. It’s true that you can’t provide healing alone, but you can help create an environment that promotes it. What your child needs from you will vary with circumstances, but there are multiple ways to provide both logistical and emotional support.
We’ve all heard stories of parents who have a rush of adrenaline and perform amazing rescues when their children are in emergency situations. The urge to protect can be overwhelmingly strong. Sometimes, though, stress doesn’t come from a crisis situation, but from an ongoing one like a child’s chronic illness, and different resources are needed to manage it.
If you receive a mental health diagnosis from your treatment team, it means you have enough related symptoms to place you in the grouping of people with similar symptoms and the related diagnosis. It is not a definition of you as an individual. This is simply a categorization that allows providers to group effective individualized intervention tools based on the symptoms you present.
Most people have experienced anxiety, nervousness, fear or panic caused by a threat of danger – a near-miss car crash, a vicious-looking dog approaching, being followed down a dark sidewalk or alley, being lost or feeling stranded – at some point in their lives. This is usually accompanied by a rapid heartbeat, quick or shallow breathing, sweaty or clammy hands, tense muscles, difficulty concentrating, catastrophic or negative thoughts and nausea.
Medications can be used in various ways to assist in correcting the brain’s functioning due to mental health problems. The challenge is that it can often take several different attempts to find the medication or combination of medications that will be the most useful to you.