s/o Coming to terms: What about your spouse?

[GoVanGogh]

How has your spouse dealt with coming to terms?

 

 

 

We are trying to get a dx still.

 

DH is very worried about doing any testing and getting any dx that may limit our child's future, especially career-wise.

 

Me?

I don't have a clue how to homeschool around this unknown; I think having a dx will give us a point of reference so we can go forward from there.

I'm worried how our almost-middle-school age child will be able to handle high school and college w/o a dx.

 

DH and I are both processing this so differently and are at totally different places.

Do you ever get on the same page?

[dbmamaz]

i dont feel like we ever have. admittedly, its his step-son. The first time I went for an evaluation, ds 16s 1st grade teacher brought the school counselor to the parent-teacher conference to suggest it. I was still a single mom, but the therapist coudlnt help us. The second time, dh had been talking to a friend at work who thought my son was autistic and recommended the doc who dx'd his son. She couldnt help, either.

 

by this point, ds was about to turn 9, and dh was unhappy with his behavior, and wanted to punish him for things I was sure he could not control. So he said he either wants permission to punish him, or a real dx and a doctor telling him what's realistic to expect. So i tried once more and finally got the diagnosis . . the first one. There were many others to come.

 

and then dh decided it would be easier to be a single parent with a 2 yo than it would be to stick around with me and my crazy son, and he left. He finally realized that he loved me enough to stick around, though.

 

Still, every single time my son does something impressive, dh says "I am starting to have hope for him" and every single time ds does something really dumb dh says "I DONT want him living here forever, you know!"

 

Men do see the world differently, though. the important part is that you and your dh both want what's best for your son. which is rather an improvement over my situation :confused:

 

It might help to check out the HIPPA law and how it applies . . . just because you have a medical or psychological diagnosis does not make it public record. and the americans with disabilities act makes it illegal for employers to discriminate, i think? I'm not entirely sure, but there are legal protections. Just like with husbands who are opposed to homeschooling because they dont think the child will be as competitive in the work force - you have to recognize that you are on the same side and try to assure your husband his concerns are valid but explain why that wont be a problem, and clearly explain the advantages of getting the evals.

 

good luck

[Heathermomster]

DH is completely laid back. He's very much hands on with both our kiddos and sees no learning issues with DS. Our child only has a maths/reading/writing disorder. The biggest adjustment my husband ever faced was setting money aside for therapies and testing, and he got past that years ago. Honestly, DH has no worries for our son's future and reminds me that testing is diagnostic, not predictive of future outcomes.

[eoffg1]

What a diagnosis provides, is an understanding of how a child thinks and learns.

A Disability rarely means unable/ can't do.

Rather it means developing ways of doing that suit them.

Instead of forcing a child to think and learn in ways that don't work for them.

 

The brain is like an invisible tool kit, where a dx provides an explanation of the tools in kit, and what one has to work with. It also enables one to advocate for their way of thinking and learning.

[Tokyomarie]

My dh handled it better when the talk was more about finding out how a child learns and why the child is having difficulties with tasks X,Y,Z rather than with seeking out any specific diagnostic label. Of course, labels or suggested labels did get attached, but the real value in testing for me was to gather some data about the child's function and get some help with finding ways to remediate and accommodate weak areas.

 

Dh did pretty well the first time we went through testing for our middle child. We went into it without any assumptions other than my insistence that there was "something" different about this child. A few years later, I had her speech/language testing updated. The speech therapist suggested an evaluation with a neuropsychologist and gave a suggested label as a reason for the evaluation. My dh reacted VERY poorly to that suggestion. It would have been better for her to name some behaviors or test results and use those to suggest that some more comprehensive testing could be helpful, without naming a suspected label.

 

It was because of that experience that I was never able to get agreement from my husband for getting my son evaluated until he was turning 15yo. At that point, I was losing every ounce of coping ability I had. Fortunately, because of my experience with my daughter, I had developed skills for managing some aspects of my son's difficulties. However, I had gotten beyond my ability to do what was right for my son without professional help.

 

Honestly, it was damaging to my son's development to have attempted to try to raise him without the information we needed about his "atypical" learning profile. I knew early on that my son was at risk for learning challenges because he had already had speech therapy. If we had gotten a comprehensive eval when he was 6 or 7yo, some of the challenges I have faced could have been avoided.