In my office, I see numerous babies and children every day. It is a joy and I go to work with a smile on my face every day.
However, some things about my job are not so joyful. Telling a parent that their child has a chronic or permanent disease is not an easy task for anyone – but as hard as it can be for me, it must be even harder for that parent to hear. What you thought to be your life and future as a parent and as a family changes forever with such news. But your son or daughter does not: they are still the same child as they were before the diagnosis.
I could be talking about any number of diseases – a child having Trisomy-21 (also known as Down’s Syndrome) or another chromosomal abnormality, cerebral palsy, or autism spectrum disorder, just to name a few.
This article is meant to be of help to those parents who may have just found out their daughter or son has a permanent/chronic condition.