Recently one child had to have an ultra sound of her bladder and kidneys the technician requested she empty her bladder, this is something that she does not yet have control of. Instead of the health care professional accepting that this is our daughters reality she goes into a long rant as to how they are able to retrain stroke victims to control their bladders so why haven't we taught our daughter. Even after explaining that our daughter also doesn't have the cognitive ability to be trained this way the technician could not or would not let this go.
Therapies are another issue of great concern to the people in our life. We get the "if only you took them to more therapy they could overcome their challenges" and we also get the opposite "your child (children) need time to be kids, they would make far more progress if you just stopped all the therapy". The reality is I would love it if they didn't require therapy but they do and we are having it provided for them hoping for positive results.
As parents we also get blamed for their various challenges and I know we aren't the only ones who get this, many parents get blamed for causing their child's conditions. It's because you didn't do ____ correctly or if only you did ____ differently.
When it's been a particularly long day...week... month... it can be difficult too hear the words of a well intended person without replying in a nasty way. Sometimes I need to pause and consider where their advice is coming from and are they trying to be helpful or are they just being nasty? Is there anything I can learn from the information they are sharing? I also need to remind myself, especially on the stressful days, that they have a right to their opinion EVEN IF THEY ARE CLUELESS. I also need to remind myself too speak to others how I would like to be treated because others also have exhausting and stressful days. We need to give each other a break and keep our unsolicited opinions and advice to ourselves. Telling people that everything they do is wrong or their fault doesn't benefit anyone. Offering to help or simply acknowleding the effort a parent puts in would be so much more beneficial. I would like to start by acknowledging all of you hard working parents "thank you for everything you do for your child (children)".
