Parents Of Children With Brain-based Disabilities Share Message: You Are Not Alone

PRLog (Press Release) - Mar. 27, 2012 - Parents of children with mental illness or brain-based disabilities know that it can be a lonely struggle to get doctors, teachers, and therapists to understand their children. Adding to their burden is the perception of society at large, judging them to be faulty parents because their child’s behavior is disruptive, annoying, or disturbing.
Adrienne Bashista, the mother of a child with intellectual and developmental delays caused by fetal alcohol exposure, and 31 other parent-writers share their efforts caring for children with a variety of brain-based disorders in Easy to Love but Hard to Raise: Real Parents, Challenging Kids, True Stories (DRT Press, February, 2012).
Bashista writes of her family’s struggle to parent a son with hyperactivity, memory and processing difficulties, mood disorder and developmental delays in her essay, “Dominoes.” “The essay’s about trying to stay calm and focused when my child was anything but,” Bashista says. “It’s about how I need to be detached from the situation to manage it correctly, but how hard this was for me. His brain doesn’t function like yours or mine. He has a lot of trouble controlling himself. There are lots of times, like I share in the essay, that my love for him is overshadowed by a degree of anger combined with grief. It makes me feel crazy.”
The book assures parents of children with mental illnesses, developmental disabilities, and behavioral challenges that they are not crazy, nor are they alone in their predicament.
Kay Marner, co-editor of Easy to Love but Hard to Raise, is the mother to a daughter with ADHD, Sensory Processing Disorder, and mood issues.
Marner says, “Parents  look around – at school, at soccer, at family parties - and they see no one else struggling with behavior challenges the way that they do. It’s isolating. But we want these parents to know that there is a huge community of moms and dads out there who are experiencing the same stresses and emotions who face the unrelenting pressure of trying to help a child who may have intense mood swings, tantrums, sleep problems, or a complete lack of impulse control. Because these disabilities are invisible, the assumption is that the child’s problematic behavior is because of poor parenting. Parents are subjected to constant judgment from the public, their families, their friends, and their children’s schools.  In reality, children with these issues often function as well as they do because of intensive, constant behavioral intervention.
“There are many parents like Adrienne and me out there. It’s their voices we capture in the book.”

If you’d like more information about Easy to Love but Hard to Raise, would like a review copy, or would like to schedule interviews with any of the editors or writers in the book, please contact Adrienne Bashista at (919)360-7073 or editorial@drtpress.com.

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A micropress publishing books for children and adults about adoption, special needs, childhood mental illness, and behavioral challenges.

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