The Shadow of the Bad Parent
There’s nobody looking at you weird like you are being a bad parent.
So a parent is quoted in an article about the Autism Family Support Project in today’s Contra Costa Times. Founding parent Nicole Saunders, whose 4-year-old son Shawn has autism, started the group to be “a place she and her husband can take Shawn and their older son Brandon where they don’t have to deal with the strange looks.” The group provides a parent support night and also a family night out, which have proved popular; plans to offer behavioral, speech, and other therapies are in the works.
Comfort on common ground is the title of the article and I think it speaks well to what kinds of supports families more than appreciate—being looked at as a “bad parent” still carries difficult undertones to parents who might once have been blamed for being “refrigerator parents” in an age when autism was said to be caused by bad parenting.
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POSTED IN: Family, Philosophy, Psychiatry, Psychology, Sensory
3 opinions for The Shadow of the Bad Parent
mcewen
Dec 28, 2006 at 2:45 pm
I wonder how prevalent such views are today? cheers
Leila
Dec 28, 2006 at 9:46 pm
I think the quote has more to do with people thinking your kid is just a “brat” when he is throwing a tantrum or running out of control in a restaurant, for instance; allowing a child to behave badly in public is what they consider bad parenting. THOSE are the kind of looks I get all the time.
Kristina Chew, PhD
Dec 28, 2006 at 10:09 pm
I do think the quote refers to that but due to the history of what was thought the causes of autism, I am always curious when “bad parenting” is mentioned.
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