Sped 114 Assignment.docx

PALLA, Beatrize Ann W. BEED SPED 4

February 13, 2019 (Wednesday) SPED 114

Family Structure is defined as the composition and membership of the family and the organization and patterning of relationships among individual family members. In planning health care for a family member or the entire family, an awareness of that family's structure may be important. According to my readings, parents of children with special needs actually have a higher divorce rate, if by chance the parents of a child with special needs actually divorce and separate this will impact greatly the child’s holistic development. In my reading of the study conducted by Dr. Jane Anderson , when a child experiences parental divorce, there are significant losses that must be acknowledged such as: The child may lose cognitive and academic stimulation, because studies show that children in divorced homes have less language stimulation and that children of divorced parents are more likely to have lower grade point averages (GPAs) and be asked to repeat a year of school; The

child may have a higher risk of emotional distress, a study of almost one million children in Sweden demonstrated that children growing up with single parents were more than twice as likely to experience a serious psychiatric disorder, commit or attempt suicide, or develop an alcohol addiction and children of single parents are twice as likely to have emotional and behavioral problems.

There are clearly negative long-term

consequences of divorce to children and parents alike and given this consequences many children have never had a full “recovery” as each special event, holiday, or celebration reminds the child of his/her loss. Given this scenario, if the parents of a child with special needs separate, if will affect also there child. The study was conducted with families that have children who do not have any disability and yet they have suffered emotionally and academically what more if this happened to children with special needs? They might end up think that their parents divorced because one of their parents does not like to have a child with special need and end up blaming himself for it.

Reference: Anderson J. (2014). The impact of family structure on the health of children: Effects of divorce. The Linacre quarterly, 81(4), 378-87.