The birth of any child for a family, in addition to the stress it has, is full of joy and happiness. Men and women take on new roles as parents, and this, in addition to confusion, brings them a lot of love. But sometimes after a few months, some families feel that their child is somewhat different from their peers. The first concern that many families with autism have is that their child is deaf. This is because when the parents call the child, they do not receive a response from the child and the child does not even look back at the family. Most families find out after their hearing test that their child is hearing healthy and should see a neurologist, psychologist or psychiatrist. Families become familiar with the word after referring to these specialists; Their child has autism. Now the parents are confused and upset. They do not want to believe that their child has a disorder. So instead of starting treatment, they are constantly changing their specialist so that they may hear something else. But the reality is the same. The child has autism spectrum disorder. Most parents go through this process. The steps that Swiss psychiatrist Elizabeth Kobler-Ross calls the five stages of grief.
Step 1: Denial
At this point, parents do not believe that this (in this case, their child's autism) happened to them, so they strongly deny it.
Step Two: Anger
When parents feel that denial is useless, they become angry. So they keep asking themselves, "Why me?" Why should this happen to me? ”Or blame others.
Step 3: Bargain
At this point, parents begin to bargain with themselves. They often repeat phrases such as, "This is probably a gift or a divine test."
Stage 4: Depression
Often a parent with a child with autism has gone through this stage. At this stage, the person may not be bored with themselves and their child, cry, be isolated, not be present in public, and spend most of their time at home or in a room without purpose.
At this stage, they usually think to themselves: "My life was ruined, my future was ruined and ...."
Step 5: Accept
In the last stage, the person agrees to come to terms with what has happened to him, to accept it and to face it.
Parents often say to themselves at this stage: "This is also a part of life, we can cope with it and live the best way."
Not all parents with autistic children experience these stages one by one, but most of them have gone through or are in most of these stages. It is very important for parents to know where they are at these stages and to do their best to get accepted. Achieving acceptance is actually the beginning of a child's treatment. The sooner the parents reach this stage, the better the child will be.
