How to Flourish in the Face of Adversity
All parents desire to play an active role in their children’s lives. This can mean participating in activities, such as playtime, important school events, family outings, and more. However, parents dealing with a chronic illness can frequently miss out on these opportunities, which can lead to their kids’ disappointment.
Empathy and understanding can go a long way to helping your kids cope with their feelings, especially because chronic illness can make life unpredictable. In this article, you will learn the importance of acknowledging your children’s feelings and how you can help them deal with disappointment.
Importance of Empathy and Understanding in Parenting
Empathy is the ability to recognize, understand, and share the thoughts, feelings, and points of view of another person. It’s a necessary skill to have to be able to connect not just with other people, but also with your children.
When you have empathy, you can make your kids feel heard, understood, and supported. It helps build a strong parent-child bond where they can feel comfortable talking about their thoughts and feelings. When children experience empathy, they are also more likely to express the same towards other people as well.
Understanding Chronic Illness
A chronic illness persists for a long period, which means that it will often require ongoing medical management and care.
Living with a chronic illness will also require lifestyle changes and strategies to control the symptoms and maintain the best possible quality of life. Management may involve dietary changes, medications, therapy, ongoing monitoring, and support from healthcare professionals and trusted family and friends.
Common Types of Chronic Illnesses
There are many types of chronic illnesses. Here are some common examples:
- Heart Disease. There are many forms of heart disease, such as coronary artery disease, congenital heart defects, or heart failure.
- Stroke. A stroke happens when the blood supply to part of the brain is blocked, or when a blood vessel bursts in the brain.
- Arthritis. Arthritis is a group of conditions that affect the joints, and cause pain and stiffness.
- Osteoporosis. Osteoporosis is a medical condition where bones become weak, making them more fragile and prone to fractures or breaks.
- Asthma. Asthma is caused by the tightening of muscles or inflammation around the airways. Its symptoms include difficulty breathing, chest tightness, and coughing.
- Chronic kidney disease (CKD). Chronic kidney disease is a medical condition that involves long-term damage to the kidneys, which can lead to decreased kidney function and kidney failure.
- Depression. Major depressive disorder is a mental disorder characterized by persistent feelings of sadness, hopelessness, and loss of interest in activities once enjoyed.
Challenges Faced by Parents with Chronic Illness
Living with a chronic illness has physical, financial, and emotional challenges.
For instance, depending on your chronic illness, you might experience physical symptoms that can be painful or debilitating. One example is rheumatoid arthritis, a disease that affects the joints and causes pain, inflammation, swelling, and decreased range of motion. This condition might make it difficult for you to move as freely as before.
Chronic illness also requires regular medical appointments and treatment, which can be time-consuming and costly. Physical symptoms, along with frequent absences due to treatment can also affect your work and career. Dealing with your illness might also make you feel a range of emotions, such as frustration and anxiety, as you deal with the challenges.
Impact on Parental Abilities
Your health can significantly affect your parenting abilities. Having a chronic illness can make it more challenging for you to fulfill various aspects of your role as a parent.
Limitations Imposed by Chronic Illness
Many chronic illnesses are characterized by physical limitations, such as pain, reduced mobility, disability, and fatigue. This can affect your ability to perform childcare tasks or engage in play and recreational activities with your children. Sometimes, you have to give all your energy just to accomplish even the most basic tasks.
Moreover, managing a chronic illness also requires frequent medical care, which can reduce the time you have available to spend with your kids. The cost of medical care can impact your finances, limiting your ability to provide children with recreational activities that cost money.
Emotional Toll on Parents
Coping with a chronic illness can take a toll on your emotions, leading to feelings of sadness, frustration, or anxiety. In addition to the financial stress, these can affect your emotional availability and how you handle challenging situations with your children.
Your health condition might also make you feel anxious and guilty about its impact on your family, especially if you can’t participate fully in your children’s lives and provide the care they need. There is also a sense of uncertainty for the future, as you worry about your ability to provide for them.
Lastly, having a chronic illness can affect your self-esteem, because you may feel less confident in your parenting abilities. You may feel like you’ve failed as a parent because you’re having difficulty with the most basic tasks. Sometimes, you know that you have to ask others for help but that can also be difficult because you don’t want to be a burden.
Effect on Children’s Expectations
Many chronic illnesses are unpredictable, which means that you’re doing good one day and not the next. Sometimes, you might be feeling stable in the morning and feel worse in the middle of the day. Difficult days can also turn into weeks or months.
This unpredictability means that plans will change constantly, and this could be hard for the children. A scheduled vacation for the weekend may be canceled if you’re experiencing flare-ups due to your chronic illness. Children may experience disappointment when activities are canceled due to their parent’s health.
Moreover, chronic illness can put limitations on your physical activity, which means that your kids may be disappointed when you can’t play or join in sports with them.
Expressing Empathy and Understanding
As a parent, you might feel guilty about disappointing your kids, but it’s important to understand that many factors of chronic illness are beyond your control. What you’re feeling is a result of your desire to provide the best for your children.
But it’s also important to realize that your kids might need help dealing with their emotions. In a 2017 study, researchers investigated how parents having a chronic illness affect their children who are transitioning into adults. They found that the participants with a parent who had a chronic illness had higher levels of anxiety, stress, and depression. At the same time, they had lower levels of optimism.
Fortunately, there are plenty of things you can do to prevent your kids from belonging to this statistic. It begins by realizing that your kid’s disappointments are valid, and they need to be acknowledged as well. Empathy and understanding from you can help validate their emotions, so they feel heard and supported. By doing this, you are also effectively showing them that it’s okay to feel disappointed and that there are healthy ways to deal with these emotions.
Coping Strategies
Mental health coping skills can help your children manage their emotions and deal with life’s challenges. These will allow them to bounce back from setbacks and adapt to changing circumstances caused by your chronic illness.
Coping skills can be divided into four types:
- Problem-focused coping skills involve solving the problem that causes the negative emotions. For example, you can help your child think of alternative activities that can be adapted to your health condition. This could be a movie night or playing board games together.
- Emotion-focused coping skills aim to change the way you react to the problem. For example, instead of dwelling on disappointment, you might help your child reduce their negative emotions by focusing on spending quality time with the family at home.
- Meaning-focused coping skills involve shifting your perspective to look at the positive side of a problem. For instance, you can talk to your child about how chronic illness has taught them valuable lessons about empathy and resilience, which have made them stronger as a person.
- Support-seeking coping skills focus on seeking emotional support from a trusted network to reduce negative emotions. For example, a disappointed child can seek emotional support from you to discuss their feelings and concerns as you provide reassurance.
Teaching Resilience and Empathy
Children can learn to cope with disruptions caused by their parent’s chronic illness, helping them develop resilience and adaptability in the face of life’s uncertainties and challenges. As they learn to recognize and respond to their parent’s needs and emotions, they may also learn to develop empathy.
Teaching resilience and empathy to a child is important because it equips them with the skills to face challenges and help them support their parent. It allows them to be more understanding and caring towards others. Moreover, it could also help improve their mental well-being.
A study looked at what factors affect the psychological well-being of teenagers. The researchers found that resilience and empathy were linked to better psychological well-being. In other words, it suggests that teenagers who were more resilient and empathetic tended to have better mental health.
Teaching your kids about empathy doesn’t have to be difficult. There are plenty of empathy activities for kids that can help them practice this skill. For example, you can play emotional charades with your kids to challenge them to express their feelings without words. This game can help them learn what emotions look like on other people.
Another helpful activity is to start journaling their thoughts and feelings. Once they’re in touch with themselves, they are more likely to be able to understand how other people think and feel in certain situations.
Empowering Children
One effective way of handling your children’s disappointment is to empower them by offering choices. For instance, your child might feel disappointed when a family outing has been canceled. Encourage them to brainstorm possible solutions to address the disappointment by asking, “What could we do at home that would still be fun?”
Once the solution is chosen, help them take action. For example, if they chose a movie night, you could ask them to pick a movie or prepare the snacks. Afterward, ask them how they feel about the solution and what adjustments would they make in the future.
Another strategy is to encourage your child to help out. When they are allowed to take on responsibilities, they can develop a sense of competence and belief in their abilities. They can also see the impact of their efforts in improving the well-being of their parents with chronic illness.
For example, younger children can help tidy up their toys or play area while older children can help run errands such as going to the pharmacy or accompanying you on grocery trips. By encouraging them to help, you are not only empowering them but also letting them feel that they matter.
Help Your Children Cope with Disappointment through Empathy
Parenting with a chronic illness might seem impossible in the face of pain, fatigue, stress, and constant medical treatment. The thought of disappointing your children due to canceled plans, low energy, and a weak body might be making you feel guilty because all you want is the best for them.
But it is important to acknowledge that you are doing your best given your circumstances. Living with a chronic illness requires flexibility and your ability to adjust is admirable. Believe that better days are ahead and that your children are learning valuable life lessons from your journey — such as empathy, understanding, and resilience.
Learn more how you can deal with the guilt you may feel as a parent with chronic illness or take a look at these 36 inventive ways you can still play with your kids when you’re tired and in pain.
Michael is a Child & Family Therapist with a private practice in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Through Mental Health Center Kids he hopes to support other therapists, parents, teachers, and mental health professionals with visually appealing online resources to support the well-being of kids in their care.
