Dear all:
I am an Occupational Therapy Year 3 student in Hong Kong doing a reseach on the quality of life(QOL) of caregivers of children with specific learning disabilities(SLD) and would like to gather opinions on the needs of the caregivers which they think are most likely to affect their QOL.
This study may help in future designs of intervention programme and professional opinions providing to the caregivers of children with SLD. Your opinions will help a lot and contribute to other caregivers.
To reply, you may simply leave a message here or contact through [email protected]
Thank you very much for your attention.
Yours truely,
Jo Kamen
Interesting topic, Jo. I’m a “caregiver” of a 12-year-old with an l.d. However, don’t think of myself in that way with respect to him. Occasionally, I do think of myself that way with respect to my mother who suffers alzheimer’s disease.
To the point, for most people, I think the big issue is time. For me, the big issue is isolation. To be an effective caregiver — one who stays alive, happy, and able to keep giving — requires relationships with other people. The demands of seeing that homework, tutoring, and special l.d.-related work get done — keeping up with what’s going on at school and keeping in touch with teachers — planning for the next steps, new school, more testing, innovations that may help him learn — take time and attention. Those tasks are mixed in with sports, a job, caring for Mother, keeping house, and being a wife. The l.d.-related tasks are mostly solitary work. To keep going, I get in touch with people on the net, make coffee dates, and get out to at least three days a week to be with people who interest me. Thus, I stay on top of the load, rather than have it pull me under.
From what I’ve seen of other parents, they quickly become debilitated by staying too close to the problem and becoming immersed in it, to the exclusion of everything else. It eventually erodes their willingness and ability to work with the l.d.
If you have other questions you would like to ask, please feel free.
Carol