Raising a child with unique needs can be like handling a cactus

Raising a child can be rosy but raising a child with unique needs can be like handling a cactus at times. A bouquet of roses offers a soft scent and bursts of colour. The blooms gently unfold as the flowers are watered, fed and sheltered. People spot the roses and comment on their magnificent unfurling. Some variants have thorns, obvious and understood by many, and these are accommodated with deliberate tactics.

Cacti and succulents are not quite the same. These plants often start off looking nebulous and relatively unattractive. These plants are hardy and long suffering. In time, some varieties bloom violently colourful flowers while others have arrays of leaves that swirl and draw the eye in. Many have thorns, needles and spikes making them very difficult to handle and certainly placing ‘he who dares’ at risk for a bleed. Unlike roses, the cacti are life long and the reward they offer is rich. In their leaves and sap there is often healing power and sustenance for others.

Perhaps you have been given a cactus to raise. Life, especially in our current situation, is tricky to navigate, your cactus feels this too. The thing with a cactus is that you don’t have to sit on it! You don’t need to add additional challenges to your experience like anger, blame shifting, squabbling or disgruntlement. When parents bring their anger, their wounds, their disappointment, and their pain to bear on those choosing to support them, they are sitting on the cactus! Their pain and troubles will persist because they don’t allow anyone close enough to raise the cactus with them.

Given the prevalence of caregiver burnout of children with unique needs, they need to invite reliable partners into their village to assist in raising their child. Often these partners are teachers or therapists, trained to deliver the best practice available. These human beings care and genuinely commit to the wellbeing of the child. A keyway to ensure their investment, is to ensure they are always treated as valuable members of your child’s village.

Teachers and therapists who dedicate their lives to supporting children with unique needs seem to bear much of the brunt from parents or caregivers who are troubled and worried about their child. Often, this ‘bash out’ is well understood and the teacher or therapist can carry the emotion for a while. However, ongoing misplaced wrath hurled their way is enough to chase them away from any school classroom, to withdraw their offer and carry out their profession differently. They can’t be blamed for retreating; the abuse can be that severe. The irony is that these professionals put themselves up for the challenge. Their work is weighty with accountability, but they know what they are doing. They see the team’s goals and they are determined to do their best to enhance these. Such teachers and therapists are hard for parents to find – they are rare.

Parents need to nurture their relationship with the professionals who choose to do this work by deliberately and actively building trust and transparent, honest and direct relationships with their child’s team members. The teachers and therapists have committed to this relationship by electing to walk this journey with you in the first place. It is for parents to grab the opportunity and take the unique flavour offered by the discipline, patience, care, correction, kindness, praise, guidance, skill, humour, hope, belief and the curriculum or therapy delivery.

So next time you feel you are sitting on the cactus, ask yourself the following questions:

• Am I prepared to work with the school and pull my weight?
• Can I strike a balance between being a velcro caregiver and a ghost?
• Can I support my child and support the school through difficult times?
• Can I suppress my frustrated ambitions and let my child be themself?
• Will I deflect rumour and find out the facts from the school?
• Will I share all that I know about my child and allow the school to do the same?

• Can I accept that the person working with my child is a human being, and just like myself, has difficult days managing my child?
• Can I commit myself to believing in the full potential of my child, to finding my child and to celebrating the child I find?

If you answered yes to the above questions, the village around your child will be that much stronger, ready to equip your child with the necessary skills and abilities to navigate the ups and the downs that lie ahead of them in this uncertain world!

For more information, visit www.bellavista.org.za