When Your Child Gets Diagnosed

“Your child is diagnosed with…”

These are fighting words.

It does not matter if this news comes at birth, at two years old, or 16 years old. These words turn your life upside-down.

Where do we go from here?

When we get a discouraging diagnosis, our expectations of the future must be re-evaluated. It is the start of the grieving process. “The five stages of grief”: denial and isolation, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

Those five stages of grief tend to be associated with a great loss in life, a death or crisis. Yet a diagnosis is the same feeling of loss in many ways.

My grieving process started when Ian was born. We had expectations of Ian, that he would be a healthy little mini-me… that he would have a brain. His diagnosis threw me into a crisis: hydrocephalus, intracranial infarction/hemorrhage, cerebral palsy, cortical visual impairment just to name a few.

It took months of intentionally processing through this loss of expectations. And there are still days when I struggle with Ian’s diagnosis.

But one of the greatest commitments to myself was to not be afraid.

Don’t be afraid.

We experience fear because we feel threatened and unprepared. It can cause us to deny the facts before us. Become depressed as we suppress our emotions.

“What is done is done. Where do we go from here?”

That is what I had to keep telling myself.

Yes, I had to make time and give myself the liberty to process this grief. His brain injury was too catastrophic for me to ignore.  But I also knew I had to be a nurturing mother to my son. Ian needed me to fight for him. That is the best thing we can do for our children. But that is also the best thing we can do for ourselves – is fight.

When I became less afraid of Ian’s diagnosis, I became empowered.

His disability did not frighten me anymore, so I began learning about it. Learning about how to help Ian. And that gave me the opportunity to see what an amazing child he is.

Regardless of the diagnosis, our children are still ours and they need us to fight for them. Don’t be afraid.