Not What I Expected: Help and Hope for Parents of Atypical Children - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Rita Eichenstein, Ph.D., is a noted psychologist and pediatric neuropsychologist. Renowned in the field of child development and author of the popular blog Positively Atypical! by Dr. Rita Eichenstein, her life’s work has been to reach out, support, and counsel atypical children and their parents. She maintains a private practice in Los Angeles, specializing in learning disabilities, attention deficit disorders, autism spectrum, twice exceptional students and giftedness, in children, teens, as well as college students and graduate students. Sought out for her clinical expertise, Dr. Eichenstein speaks at schools, educational and business conferences, has been cited in NYMetroParents Prevention.com, Scholastic.com, SheKnows.com, and Time Magazine, and is a frequent guest on national, local, and syndicated radio programs across the country.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

FOREWORD

The journey from infancy to adulthood is both promising and perilous—a path best navigated with the informed and loving support of parents and other caregivers along the way. As such an important figure in your child’s growth, how can you best be informed and prepared to optimize the support and guidance you give? And when things don’t go as planned, when a child has an unanticipated difference in how they think, feel, or behave—when they are “not typical”—how can you be as strong and knowledgeable as possible in order to offer the best support you can? When things get tough, how can you remain a wellspring of love for your child? Our own resistance, confusion, and disappointment, and sometimes our embarrassment and shame when we compare our family to the experiences of others, can create stress and may distance any of us, at least at first, from being present for our child in the most supportive ways we can.

The term “atypical child” is now commonly used to describe individuals who have some features that make their particular patterns of growth; ways of thinking, perceiving, and feeling; and ways of behaving and interacting with others not what we usually expect. Whether this atypical way of being stems from a difference in the body or in the brain’s structure and functioning, the difference is not the result of anything a parent has intentionally done. Yet often we can feel guilty and responsible for these differences. Parental care and concern are deep, innate feelings that can sometimes become overwhelming, restricting our thinking and making our mood somber and our optimism dimmed. Learning to understand your own emotions can help free you from these common yet unnecessary internal reactions.

In this magnificent handbook for learning to become the best source of support for an atypical child, Rita Eichenstein, PhD, serves as an inspiring guide. This book will walk you step by step through the inner and outer challenges of this journey. As a clinical neuropsychologist with extensive experience and knowledge, Dr. Eichenstein supports you not only with her expertise with atypically developing children and adolescents, but also with her emotionally supportive strategies. If you’ve just found out about the unique challenges for your child’s development, this is a powerful guide to help you take on this new information. And if you’ve been living for a while with knowledge of your child’s atypical development, this book will also be of great help in guiding you through the long-term issues you will face.

Not What I Expected itself is wonderfully not what you may typically expect from a book on this topic: Instead of focusing exclusively on your child’s experience and needs, the approach explores the scientifically established view that the best way to support your child’s development is to encourage and support your inner understanding. By paying attention to your own feelings and reactions, you can catalyze the transition from first sensing that something is different and seeking professional help to adjusting to this new knowledge and then learning to move from the common experiences of denial, anger, sadness, and grief toward a sense of acceptance, mental clarity, and empowerment.

Take in the wisdom and support Not What I Expected provides so that you and your child can optimize your relationship and flourish, both together and as individuals living your best possible lives.

—Daniel J. Siegel, MD
Executive director of the Mindsight Institute
Clinical professor at the UCLA School of Medicine
Author of Brainstorm and The Developing Mind and coauthor of Parenting from the Inside Out, The Whole-Brain Child, and No Drama Discipline

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to a book about parenting that does not focus on your child. Instead, it focuses on the most important force behind your child’s well-being: you, the parent. I wrote this book to help you learn how to cope with your feelings about parenting a child who is different from what you expected—what I term as an atypical child.

What does atypical mean? It’s a term that encompasses children who do not conform to the usual expectations, whether because of a learning disorder, behavioral or psychological issues, medical problem, or another condition. Atypical also refers to kids who do not meet criteria for a specific diagnostic category, or who have not yet been diagnosed. They might be quirky, delayed, difficult, or just unusual. They might be highly gifted in one area but delayed in others. Their suffering, and the suffering of their parents, does not get a label. All of these children’s struggles generate intense feelings in their parents—feelings like bewilderment, confusion, anxiety, and fear.

I meet these parents when they come to me to get their children tested. As a neuropsychologist, I’m trained to conduct assessments of a child’s brain-behavior connections. Every day, worried parents ask me, “What am I doing wrong? What am I supposed to do? Please help me understand my child better.”

What they don’t ask, but what I’ve discovered that many are thinking, is: Am I a bad person? What’s wrong with me? I don’t know how to handle my feelings about my child. I feel crazy because no one believes me when I say something’s wrong with my kid. Or more commonly, My child is driving me crazy and I feel like a terrible parent, but it’s my feelings that are the hardest part, not my child. Some parents have fears they don’t dare verbalize: Am I causing this? Was it something I ate during pregnancy? And many have anxieties they try to suppress, but which bubble up every night in the wee hours: What am I supposed to do with my feelings? Am I entitled to my feelings? Isn’t it supposed to be about my child, who is clearly suffering?

This book is designed to help parents of atypical children understand what they are feeling and learn how to manage their emotions. The difficult feelings involved in parenting special children are normal responses that evolve in predictable phases. Many of parents’ most painful or shameful feelings are innate, brain-based reactions to stressful or traumatic situations. There are techniques you can use to manage the emotional phases you will pass through when coming to terms with raising your atypical child. By learning how to handle these difficult but common emotional and cognitive states, you’ll be able to maximize your ability to parent your child wholeheartedly. When parents understand and have control over a seemingly uncontrollable situation, they become empowered and their confidence grows.

Raising an atypical child requires atypical parenting. It involves an ongoing process of self-questioning and decision making that can overwhelm even the most committed parents. The responsibility for this young life is in your hands, yet you may often feel helpless and ill-equipped to track down all the options and juggle the demands of doctors, teachers, therapists, and social workers, not to mention family members. In addition to these obvious stressors, there are deeper issues. Having an atypical child will trigger emotions that are hard-wired in all of us—denial, fear, bargaining with fate, isolation, and depression—along with hope, optimism, and joy.

As a neuropsychologist who has worked with thousands of families, I believe that the secret crisis of atypical children is the crisis of their parents. Parents, both as individuals and as couples, often struggle to keep their lives together while helping their children. Mothers in particular are at a higher risk of depression...