During the years guest blogger Kathy Guzzo parented young children with special needs, she often felt like she didn’t know what to do. In today’s post she describes those years and explains how she learned to change her focus.
What To Do When You Don’t Know What To Do, Part 1
Looking back over the fifty plus years I’ve lived, there have been many times I was in a situation where I had no idea what to do. But, none of those times affected me then or now as much as when my child was seriously ill and I felt helpless. As their mom I always felt I should be able to make everything better, but I realized early on mothering just doesn’t work that way.
Feeling Helpless as a Mom
When our son was 6 months old he contracted a serious case of bronchitis that soon became pneumonia. For the next 2-½ years he was extremely ill. We went to specialists; he underwent extensive testing, hospitalization stays, yet the doctors didn’t know why his body could not flush out the bacteria that had caused the initial pneumonia. The nights when he coughed till he vomited, that he struggled breathing, or while he was hooked up to oxygen, I felt helpless, like a failure as a parent.
About the time he started to improve, our 6-year-old daughter began having seizures. So once again I endured the agony of watching a child be poked and prodded while answering the same questions doctors asked over and over again. She was terrified because she knew something was happening to her body, but she couldn’t control it. During this time it broke my heart to see her withdraw because once again other than what I was doing, I was helpless to stop the seizures.
We made it through those situations and were rolling along with 4 active children, when a different daughter started experiencing migraines at the age of 14. The cycle began again with doctors, testing and medications. Then at the age of 16 she contracted mono, had strep throat, then they told us she had mono again. For two years I watched my active, fun loving teenaged daughter become frustrated with life because all she wanted was to enjoy high school but she was missing more days than she could attend. Eventually, right before she began college she was diagnosed with systemic lupus and Epstein Barr Replication. However, having a diagnosis didn’t take away my feelings I had the previous years where I wanted to help her, to make everything okay.
Changing My Focus
In thinking back over these experiences, many times my only lifeline was my faith and prayer. When I had the overwhelming sensation to hold one of my children hoping that would make everything okay, I had to focus on the fact that my Heavenly Father loved them so much more than I did and He was able to meet their needs in a very special way and what He asked me to do in those times of helplessness was love my children and to love myself.
Do You Understand How Kathy Felt?
Tomorrow, Kathy will be back with a nifty little acrostic that explains what God taught her to do when she didn’t know what to do. Until then, leave a comment about times when you didn’t know what to do as a parent. If your years spent parenting a child with special needs were like mine, that shouldn’t be too hard to do!
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Feeling helpless as a parent in my own ability to create change has happened more times than I can remember. I can’t speak for anyone else, but for me I think I needed to be brought to a place where I wasn’t able to DO anything but rely on my faith and my Father’s love (and at times even that was challenging!).
Feeling helpless as a parent in my own ability to create change has happened more times than I can remember. I can’t speak for anyone else, but for me I think I needed to be brought to a place where I wasn’t able to DO anything but rely on my faith and my Father’s love (and at times even that was challenging!).