Listening to the other side of things doesn’t have to change our minds on how we feel and think, but hopefully can provide some understanding of why someone else feels and thinks differently than we do.
While advocating for in-home supports and community based services (CBS) for Alison many years ago, I could not understand why some parents sought out institutional care for their child with developmental disabilities instead of taking care of them at home. Institutional care was something I never wanted for Alison or for our family to ever have to make the grueling decision such as institutional care for her.
In-home supports and CBS were fairly new when Alison was born with severe developmental disabilities (DD) so for children with DD who were older than Alison, the only choices those parents had were to institutionalize their child or take on their child’s care themselves
When Alison was probably around eight years old, I was invited to attend a meeting where there were parents of three children with home care and parents of three children who were institutionalized. During this meeting both sides shared their concerns and desires for their children.
One of the things I came back with from that meeting was the parents of the children who were institutionalized didn’t want to do this and couldn’t for whatever reason handle the ongoing tasks of taking care of their child at home. I saw the pain in the eyes of these parents for the difficult decision they made years before and not having their child grow up with their family. At the time of that meeting their children were older (as were their parents) and too settled and set in their ways at the institution to try to move them home.
My decision for my daughter to have in-home care and CBS was not swayed by speaking with the parents whose children were in institutions, but it did give me a new perspective on “the other side” as it was in my mind that they institutionalized their child because they didn’t care.
My advocacy continued while I continued to make my voice heard where it counted…for my daughter, for my family and for others in our situation.
