Marriage and Special Needs: What’s the Impact?

Marriage and Special Needs: What’s the Impact?

by | Apr 4, 2011 | Different Dream, Different Dream Series, Products

Marriage and special needs is a topic discussed often in special needs community. This post looks at recent research findings on the topic.

Unless you live under a rock, you’ve probably heard the statistics about how having a child with special needs affects marriages. The most startling statistics report an 80% failure rate in marriages where a child has special needs.

Divorce and Special Needs

A recent article at the Huffington Post reinforces the statistic about marriage and special needs. In it, family attorney Linda Helfend Meyer writes about what she’s observed about the impact of special needs on marriages, both in her law practice and in her personal life. What she writes is sobering.

Marriage and Special Needs

However, these statistics leave me scratching my head because they don’t jive with my research findings for Different Dream Parenting: A Practical Guide to Raising a Child with Special Needs. When the fifty couples interviewed for the book were asked how their child’s special needs affected their marriages, most responded emphatically that it strengthened them.

Don’t get me wrong. Several said they sought marriage counseling sometime after a child with special needs became part of their families. And some couples weren’t able to reconcile their differences and are now divorced. But the vast majority are still married and feel their relationships with their spouses are stronger.

Your Marriage and Special Needs

Experiences is a great teacher, and in this day and age, our marriages need lots of assistance. So leave a comment if you like. It can be about how your marriage got stronger or about how you tried to work things out, but couldn’t. Or describe one of your struggles and how you deal with it as a couple. Leads on good marriage counselors would also be appreciated by couples who need help.

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Why I Wrote a Different Dream

Why I Wrote a Different Dream

by | Sep 23, 2009 | Different Dream, Different Dream Series, Products

Jolene Philo Write to Serve Interview

Since A Different Dream for My Child was released, readers have been asking what motivated me to write it. To answer that question, I’m adhering to a lesson I learned as the parent of a special needs child: do not reinvent the wheel unless it is absolutely necessary. Between doctor’s appointments and feeding tubes, surgeries and special diets, there just wasn’t time.

Those days are long gone at my house, but somehow, I still don’t have time to reinvent anything unless there’s no other way. So today, instead of  creating a brand new post about why I wrote Different Dream, I’m directing you to a recent interview at Maria Keckler’s marvelous website WritingtoServe. Maria’s insightful questions did a wonderful job of drawing out both the message of Different Dream and how it came to be written.

And here’s an added bonus. If you go Maria’s website and leave a comment, you’ll be entered in a drawing to receive a free book. So head on out, enjoy the interview, and here’s hoping you win a free book!

Do you like what you see at DifferentDream.com? You can receive more great content by subscribing to the quarterly Different Dream newsletter and signing up for the daily RSS feed delivered to your email inbox. You can sign up for the first in the pop up box and the second at the bottom of this page.