Kristin Faith Evans and Todd Evans
Shortly after our daughter with severe disabilities came home from the neonatal intensive care unit, we found ourselves in unknown territory. Suddenly, we didn’t know how to continue to make our marriage work in the midst of the strain. We didn’t realize couples caring for children with disabilities must use additional coping and marriage skills than the average parenting couple, and we certainly didn’t have those skills. Over the next couple of years our marriage declined.
We sought marriage counseling twice with two different counselors. But at the time, neither
therapist had received training for how to support couples caring for children with disabilities, and we left feeling even more hopeless. And we found no books relevant to our circumstances and needs. We almost gave up. Then, we committed to giving our marriage one more shot and were determined to work to improve our relationship. We stumbled through developing the unique skills on our own. Kristin regularly attended individual therapy and brought coping skills home for both of us to learn and apply in our relationship.
Six years later, we were enjoying a thriving marriage, and we became passionate about helping other parents and couples build the same skills. We wanted to help other families strengthen their faith, mental health, and marriages and avoid suffering like we had.
Through Kristin’s training in her master’s in social work program and her clinical experience,
extensive research, reflecting back on our marriage success, and Scripture, we honed in on the additional tools that make special needs marriages resilient. In How to Build a Thriving Marriage as You Care for Children with Disabilities, we offer the practical relationship tools these couples need to save, strengthen, and enjoy their marriages. In addition, we designed the Disability Parenting Marriage Assessment Tool to guide couples in identifying their relationship strengths, weaknesses, and unique needs.
While researching for the book, we discovered that the popular statistic—that’s there’s an
80% risk for divorce in parents of children with disabilities—is unfounded. Researchers don’t agree on an exact rate for separation, divorce, or marital dissatisfaction for couples parenting children with chronic illnesses or special needs. Many variables are involved. Recent studies have focused on the findings that a high percentage of couples report they enjoy a stronger marriage and increased intimacy as a result of caring for their child with disabilities. Though the research is inconclusive regarding the divorce rate, studies consistently conclude that disability parenting couples face increased, unique, and intense stressors that parents of typically developing children usually never face.
In the book, we help couples understand the unique stressors and needs for caregiving couples and guide them through the steps of learning and strengthening those skills: readjusting expectations, moving towards acceptance, and recommitting to their marriage vows; setting priorities and reorganizing; developing healthy stress management skills; communicating more effectively; supporting each other in processing grief and chronic sorrow; collaboratively problem solving; prioritizing respite time together; lowering stress levels to nurture sexual intimacy; building a strong support network; mindfully parenting as a team; and addressing mental health concerns.
1. Readjusting expectations and recommitting to the marriage relationship
First, couples must readjust their expectations for their marriage and life together and fully
recommit to moving forward together as a couple and as co-parents. To be resilient and function well as a family, couples must adapt to their actual circumstances and restructure their way of thinking. They have to adjust to the new norm. This is a continual process. The more cognitively flexible spouses are willing to be, the more resilient their relationship will grow. In addition, both spouses must be open to working towards acceptance of their loss and embracing their reality.
2. Setting priorities and reorganizing responsibilities
One of the main steps caregiving couples must take in order to reduce strain on their marriages is to reassess their family’s priorities and reorganize each of their daily responsibilities. The many care needs of a child with chronic illness or disabilities can cause an imbalance in routines and family functioning. A couple cannot operate as they did pre-diagnosis without potentially doing damage to their marriage and family. It may be that they decide they cannot do it all and discontinue even important activities. Strengthening management and organizational skills will also help reduce their stress levels and give them more quality time as a couple.
3. Developing healthy coping skills and managing stress together
Couples of children with special needs face more intense stressors and must use different coping strategies and use them more often than couples without children with disabilities. The enormous strain of caregiving builds pressure on the marriage relationship. Utilizing advanced coping strategies such as mindfulness exercises and progressive muscle relaxation and de-stressing together on a regular basis will help improve their mental and physical health and ultimately the marriage relationship.
4. Communicating more effectively
Increasing effectiveness in different types of conversations will allow couples to spend more
time on more intimate conversations. Couples parenting children with disabilities have more to discuss and less time to talk. They must have two additional important types of
conversations—coordinating all the additional daily tasks and discussing their child’s health and support and service needs. When couples become intentional about being supportive and efficient in scheduling and detail conversations, they will be able to prioritize spending more time in deeper conversations about the marriage relationship.
5. Supporting each other in processing grief and chronic sorrow
How couples support each other or don’t support each other in processing grief can be one of the most powerful opportunities to grow in intimacy or become a painful wedge in their marriage. Parents of children with disabilities experience both acute grief and then a unique, ongoing, and cyclical grief process called chronic sorrow. Spouses may feel different emotions at different times and experience varying degrees of intensity of grief. Learning to validate one another’s experiences and accepting each other’s differences in grieving can nurture deep trust and intimacy.
6. Collaboratively problem solving
The ability to tackle complex problems as a team proves to be a vital skill for these couples. To grow a stronger marriage, couples must collaboratively and creatively manage all the caregiving demands, lack of sleep, medical and therapy appointments, chronic child illnesses, limited time alone together, working, finances, and challenging child behaviors. When couples are willing to look at their problems in a different way with a hopeful attitude, they can capitalize on one another’s strengths and ideas and work together to make their circumstances work. Asking for help from others and receiving available financial assistance can greatly help relieve some of the stress.
7. Prioritizing respite breaks together
When disability parenting couples receive even short respite breaks, they experience numerous benefits including improvements in their stress levels, relationship satisfaction and intimacy, family functioning, mental health, parenting effectiveness, and optimism about their marriage and caring for their child. Getting out of the house together can be very challenging, and they may need to overcome several emotional and logistical roadblocks. We encourage couples to work together on a plan for their next break together with the commitment to spend a little bit more time alone together than they typically do. Making their plan work will likely require asking for help from others.
7. Reducing stress levels to nurture sexual intimacy
Couples parenting children with disabilities often have a more difficult time engaging in sexual intimacy than parents of children without disabilities. The increased levels of chronic mental, emotional, and physical stress lower sexual desire, decreases sexual satisfaction, and prevent couples from spending time connecting emotionally. In order for couples to improve their sexual intimacy, they have to regularly intentionally lower their bodies’ stress response and calm their central nervous systems.
8. Building a strong support network
Couples who seek out social connection and support have been shown to maintain stronger
marriages, decrease their stress levels, and improve their moods. These couples also cope better, adapt more quickly, and find positive ways of viewing their situations. Attending a support group together can be difficult, so couples must be creative and flexible and find other ways to cultivate relationships including attending an online support group for couples.
9. Mindfully parenting as a team
The practice of mindful parenting has been proven especially important for disability parents, because it can foster parents’ acceptance for their children, make parenting decisions more consistent, improve interactions, and reduce the child’s problematic, aggressive, or self-injurious behaviors. Parenting mindfully increases parenting effectiveness, builds connection between spouses, and reduces conflict and stress levels. We encourage parents to be fully present with their children and pause before reacting.
10. Addressing mental health concerns
A significant number of parent caregiving marriages are negatively impacted by mental health conditions in one or both spouses. Disability parents face two times the risk for developing clinical mental health symptoms when compared to the national average. Studies show that approximately one in three parents who have children with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) experience clinical depression and anxiety. In order to strengthen the marriage relationship, spouses will need to support one another in seeking professional treatment and encourage recovery at home.
Attempting to build these skills can feel overwhelming to some couples. We encourage couples to take the first step and focus on only one aspect of one of the skills at a time. Over the weeks and months, these efforts to reduce stress together, communicate more intentionally, and cultivate deeper levels of trust and understanding through sharing grief will help couples build a thriving marriage.
Dr. Holmes says you want to get the book!
Get the book! Visit their site:
Hear Kristin and Todd on the podcast Dec. 2024! Follow this link in the catalog!
References:
1. Negash, S., Nalbone, D. P., Wetchler, J. L., Woods, S., & Fontaine, K. L. (2015). Intimacy in the midst of caregiving: Examining relationship and sexual satisfaction of parents raising children with special needs. Journal of Family Psychotherapy, 26(3), 190–209.
https://doi.org/10.1080/08975353.2015.1067532; Marshak, L. E., & Prezant, F. P.
(2007). Married with special-needs children: A couple’s guide to keeping connected. Woodbine House.
2. Scherer, N., Verhey, I., & Kuper, H. (2019). Depression and anxiety in parents of children with intellectual and developmental disabilities: A systematic review and meta-analysis. PLoS One, 14(7) :e0219888.
Comments