Domestic violence. Child abuse - sexual, physical. Divorce (so sadly common.) Drug and alcohol addiction. Infidelity. Suicide. Every week I meet a new family that's struggling with one or more of these things. And I'll state from the outset, these are middle and upper class families - let's not kid ourselves as to how rampant these issues are in our world.
The children suffer, always. Both typical and special needs children are aware of these issues. I see an adult with DD's who's struggling with his father's abuse of 20 years ago and a typically developing teen struggling with a parent's infidelity. I found myself recently saying to one of the adolescents I work with: "welcome to adulthood." He was understandably sad that his parents had divorced. Depressed in fact, and understandably so. I didn't know what else to say. People divorce. People are sick with addiction. People make mistakes - grave and painful mistakes that effect their children for decades. And all we can do is try to cope.
Coping is tough. Easy to say - tough to accomplish. Indeed so much of what we want for our children (and selves) is to learn how to cope with the challenges in front of us. I just read and heard interviewed one of the survivors of the Boston Marathon bombing. She lost a leg. She sounded upbeat and positive. She was coping, at least for the moment she was being interviewed. She'll get support, one hopes, probably more support due to the fact that she was a victim of this particular terror. The kids and adults who live with the stressors listed at the outset of this submission however so often have much less support.
So, I'll continue to validate their pain, work on management - hopefully resolution of their anxiety and depression, their alcoholism and stress on their marriages and children. And all too often, welcome their children to adulthood.
