Peggy Finston MD: I wrote this book over twenty years ago when my kids, then young, were ill. As a parent and a psychiatrist, I was painfully aware of the abyss between the facts of diseases and experiences of patients and families. This book is about the emotional issues parents face when their child is sick. Whatever wisdom to be found here was culled from those who generously shared their lives.
There are no accounts of marathons won. Rather, they told me about the sometimes grueling trials and intimate triumphs to cultivate their children's character. Writing this book prepared me for my own travel. How to raise a child with a sense of his/her possibility and staying-power, despite and whether or not there's a disability. How can parents insulate themselves from the implicit, yet coercive cultural dictates to produce and achieve for self-worth? (That was my concern then, and more so now.) Through those warped social reflections, mothers and fathers will see themselves as failures and raise their children from misguided guilt. The new euphemisms will sap them all of ambition. (Special words to spare hurt feelings only magnifies that someone is "seen" through different eyes. While some may be too numbed-out to notice, we always feel another's intention, whatever the language.)
Looking back, I realize the unsettling continuity between my own emotional agendas, the book's theme, and what has become more prevalent today. To me, our world has amped-up and is fizzling-out with the Being-Number-One obsession. And there's no time-out to refuel.
If you listen too much to media, you don't worry about your child's personality, but how she scores on a personality test. You don't get concerned about his kindness to others but whether others like him.
The only update I can add is the following: Do yourself a favor. Don't Listen, except mostly to yourself and your Best Self. A good chance no one else will care more about your child than you and will put as much thought into what his/her life is about and will become.
Peggy Finston MD 02/06/11
http://www.Acu-Psychiatry.com