Humour as a Potential Coping Mechanism for Parents with Children with Special Needs
This article talks about the importance of humor, something we use in our daily lives and conversations, and how it can be a potential coping mechanism for parents of children with special needs, who undergo a lot of stress.
Cara Crasto
Parenting a Child with Special Needs -
Every child is quite important to their parents who go the extra mile for their child’s well-being and safety. Parenting is quite challenging, but being a parent of a child with special needs requires double the effort. Parents and caregivers of children with special needs experience various psychological, social, economic, and physical challenges that another parent could possibly not imagine (Ambikile & Outwater, 2012). From social stigma and isolation to expensive treatments, it is quite scary and overwhelming. So how does one cope with it?
A child may be diagnosed with Autism, ADHD, Dyslexia, Asperger’s, Down Syndrome, or any other developmental disorder (disorders which generally affect children, usually their development process) which are difficult to identify and treat. Each of these disorders perhaps has a million webpages, books, journals, foundations, and organizations dedicated to it, that not only create awareness but also help out such families. However, parents are still subject to a plethora of challenges that do not just exist within their walls but also outside.
I remember when my friend was diagnosed with Dyscalculia and her aunt remarked, “I just hope she doesn’t turn out to be a murderer.” Such misinformation and ignorance is the cause of abounding labels, often distasteful and hurtful, which is one of the most common challenges children with special needs and their parents face. Unfortunately, sometimes parents or other relatives are part of the ‘What will others think’ culture as well.
From a socio-economic aspect, children with special needs require extremely expensive treatments and specialized educational facilities as well as constant care. Often familial issues also arise within spouses or siblings due to a lack of time or attention they give to each other. Uncertainty of the future is one of the most troublesome aspects of parenting a child with special needs in terms of how their child will cope without their parents or will they eventually live a ‘normal’ life? Will they fall in love and get married?
Research suggests that parents with children who have autism undergo extreme levels of stress for mainly two reasons — Dependency & Management and Limitations of Financial Resources, with mothers reporting more stress than fathers. (Dabrowska & Pisula, 2010). Similarly, parents with children suffering from other disorders are also victims of such stressors and thus they must be managed effectively.
From ‘knock knock’ jokes to silly puns, we all use humor in our daily conversations and it has been recognized as more than just mere fun and games. Humour is essentially a social phenomenon and is seen as not only a mode of entertainment but also as a mechanism to counter stress and increase psychological well-being. It has a multitude of benefits that are common knowledge but how effective is it as a coping mechanism?
Humour as an Effective Coping Mechanism -
Humour has been commonly seen as a psychological salve and a shield. A study done in 1993 reaffirms the above — that humor is an important coping mechanism and a tool of adjustment (Kuiper, Martin & Olinger, 1993). Another study titled ‘The Uses of Humour in Case Management with High-Risk Children and their Families’ also highlighted the potential advantages of humor in high-stress service situations amongst children and recommended it. (Gilgun & Sharma, 2012).
Black or gallows humor, which is basically joking about things that are taboo or that are normally considered too painful to discuss, has been seen to be of therapeutic value especially to victims of trauma.
A book by Feig (1979) saw Emil Fackenheim, philosopher and Auschwitz survivor highlighting the importance of humor by saying that they kept their morale through humor. A study by Ostrower (1998) involved interviewing a Holocaust survivor, who said, “When I was interviewed for Spielberg and they asked me, what I thought was the reason I survived, they probably expected me to answer good fortune or other things. I said that I thought it was laughter or humor.” It must be emphasized that the use of humor during the Holocaust in no way reduced the objective horrors but it subjectively reduced them by acting as a means of coping with them.
Humour & Healthcare -
A recent study concluded that the benefits of humor are recognized by both adult cancer patients and nurses and that it has therapeutic effects in clinical practices. (Tanay, Wiseman, Roberts & Ream, 2014). In another study conducted in 2006, nurses (21.4%) reported using humor most often during “patient care” situations i.e., providing medicines, moving patients, physical therapy, and so on. More than a third (38.66%) of the nurses stated that they used “word-play/language” as a humorous coping strategy. Battrick & colleagues conducted a study in 2013 in a children’s hospital in England that recorded the perceptions of children, parents, nurses, doctors, and other health-care staff. They concluded that “the majority of children indicated that they liked playing with clowns during their hospital stay, and the majority of parents agreed that the presence of clown doctors has a positive impact on sick children and their families.” The majority of the pediatricians who were participants of the study also were of the opinion that the presence of clown doctors had a positive impact on sick children and their families during a hospital stay. (Battrick, Glasper, Prudhoe & Weaver, 2013).
Humour as a coping mechanism has proven its caliber time and again. Its implication with parents who have kids with special needs is under-researched and thus requires significant attention.
Cara is a student from Fergusson College and a musician with interests ranging from memes to anything Psychology. Follow Cara on her Instagram page.
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