On Monday, students will be e-mailing me their entries for our class's online encyclopedia project, which I will be posting on the web in the coming days. For the first half of class, each student will say a few words about his or her write-up.
Just as a miscellaneous item, today's (Sunday) Wisconsin State Journal has an article entitled "Grandparents Get the Kids." The article discusses the stress and coping aspects of being the primary caregiver for one's grandchild, particularly in situations where the child has special needs.
The last hour or so of class, we will have our discussion of Chapter 4, pertaining to coping with death and dying, plus pp. 60-64 of Chapter 3, on caregiving. As the questions from Group C come in, I will post them below...
Do you think losing a parent or caregiver at different stages in your life would be more stressful (i.e. losing a parent/caregiver during childhood versus losing a parent/caregiver during adolescence or emerging adulthood, etc.)? How could this impact different age groups’ lives?
It may be more difficult for a child who does not understand death to deal with a loss. They are perhaps too young to understand it -- however, do you think some sort of "death/grief education" is important at a young age so as to structure better coping and beliefs in young/emerging adulthood? Who is in the best position to "provide" such education to the young?
I believe that everyone has their own relationship with the idea of death, that forms from a young age -- from one's own experiences (or lack thereof) with death. Do you think that a single incident of death is able to completely change one's entire relationship with death? Why or why not?
Families in the United States deal with conflicting notions of death: Death is invisible and privatized versus death is shoved in our face by media. What factors contributed to the construct of these two concepts and what affect do they have on families? (p.77-78).
In the book, it talks about many reports on the deaths of famous people and how those tragedies leave viewers with illusions of intimacy and grieving. It says that, "Individuals who did not personally know the deceased can go through rituals of mourning…" (p. 77). So, how does this virtual grief differ from the actual grief? And how do these two affect people differently?
With the desensitization of death, illness, and violence in the media, how is it possible that death is still a taboo subject in Western culture?
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For Dr. Alan Reifman's Summer 2007 Course at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
Course/Administrative Links
General Stress and Coping Links
- Coping Strategies (S. Taylor)
- Family Research Blog (U. British Columbia)
- Family Stress (U. Illinois)
- Family Stress/Coping Strategies (Mich. St. U.)
- Family Stress/Family Strengths (Clemson U.)
- Family Stress/Perception (U. Minnesota)
- NCFR Fact Sheets for Dealing with Various Types of Stress
- National Study of Daily Experience
- Psychological Stress Research (York U.)
- Stress Lecture Notes (D. Sherman)
- Stress Research Overview (S. Cohen)
- TIME Magazine Historical (1983) Article on Stress
Theories of Stress and Coping
Measurement of Stress and Coping
Parenting Stress
- "Boomerang Kids"
- Childhood Cancer (J. Pediatric Psychology)
- Does Family Stress Cause Children's Illness?
- Parenthood in America (UW-Madison)
- Parenting Adolescents
- Parenting Children with ADHD
- Parenting Stress Appraisals with Young Children
- Premature Baby
- "Supermom" Stress (APA)
- Teens and Parents
- Unintended Adolescent Pregnancy
- "Fragile Families" project (Princeton U.)
Substance Use/Abuse and Family Stress
- National Inst on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism
- NIAAA document on Fetal Alcohol Syndrome
- National Inst on Drug Abuse
- DSM-IV Substance Abuse & Dependence criteria
- Substance page from Dr. Reifman's TTU adolescence course
- Research Inst on Addictions
- Children of Alcoholics (COA) Foundation
- COA and Family Environment
- Prenatal alcohol exposure and postnatal environment
Mental Illness/Developmental Disabilities and the Family
- National Comorbidity Survey (tracking rates of mental disorders in the population)
- Overview of Social Factors in Clinical Disorder, by M. Vasey (see slides 22-24)
- ADHD and the Family (Focus Adol. Services)
- NCSET DD's and the Family
- National Institute of Mental Health
- American Psychological Association
10 comments:
The issue seems painful, where the parents are absent from the picture completely. Otherwise, growing up with grandparents is a rewarding experience for both the child as well as the elder. It seems troublesome that at an age where the elders are going to be concerned about their own health and care needs they are required to step up and care for children again.
Though I wonder if any of them have a very different perspective now, raising their kids' kids than they had raising their own kids - are they wiser? Is it any easier? Do they feel more in control now after all those life-experiences?
I lived with my grandmother alone for about a year and it was wonderful. I think she had learned a great deal from raising her own children, and was more flexible and open with me, while never losing her authority or responsibility. However, I think one thing that made a big difference was her age. She was relatively young during this period. I'm sure that at an older age things would have been much more difficult, especially with dealing with one's own age-related issues.
I think that the points made in our discussion on the death of a parent when a child is young were very good but I think a point that was not raised was the increased responsibility that the child has to take on. Especially in cases where the child is an older sibling of younger sisters and brothers, the older sibling might choose to take on a parental role in the case that a parent dies. For example, my boyfriend's mother passed away when he was 12 and being the oldest child, he said that he watched over and took care of his younger brother after his mother's death. When his father was working, he would make dinner and make sure that his brother was taken care of, in a sense taking up a type of maternal role for his brother. So I think that this is a common response to the death of a parent when children are young is that one of the children has to grow up a lot faster than normal and take on the responsibilities and part of the role of a parent if there are younger children in the family.
In response to the article about grandparents taking care of their grandchildren, it depends on the age of the grandparent and their health. It would not be in the childs' best interest to be with grandparents who are anti-social and suffering from serious health problems, physically or mentally. For those grandparents who are "still withit" God bless them.
Is the subject of death still taboo? I don't believe it's taboo in the sense that it's excluded or forbidden from everyday society, but we do have a greater fear of death. As the book states, we live in a time when death is not as common, and our powers of death prevention has grown exponentially. Thus we don't think about death as much - it is a low priority next to an education, love, family, jobs, etc. I think the problem in today's society is not so much the way we've marginalized death, but the depth and sensitivity of our communication in general. Modern society presents more distractions than ever before. TV, internet, video games, music, etc. Media saturation has reached a peak, and sadly, the time we spend bewitched by a good TV show or web video takes away from time than can be spent engaged in deep conversation with our loved ones. I believe it is this dearth of heartfelt dialogue that prevent us from discussing important issues - issues like death.
This was an extremely difficult topic to cover, especially because I have been fortunate enough not to lose anyone close to me. However, I come from a small, tight-knit community and have experienced losses of community members.
I feel losing a parent is difficult at any stage in life. Like we said it class, it is easier to accept the death of a parent if you are an adult and your parent was suffering tremendously. However, it is tough to say if it it worse to lose a parent as a young child or as an adolescent or young adult. I believe the coping mechanism employed by the child is not only a result of age, but also of education, awareness, and experience. I think there are many adults in this world who would cope more poorly than children due to their beliefs and personality.
On the other hand, there *ARE* some very good TV shows that can help spur great conversations. I'm a huge proponent of HBO series, in particular, "Six Feet Under" and "The Wire". The former is precisely the kind of show those of us that fear death need to watch. It presents us with a portrait of a family that operates a funeral business. Each member is deeply, humanly flawed and heart-breaking events occur. Also, each episode opens with a person meeting their maker, to show both the inevitability and ubiquity of death. "The Wire," on the other hand, is a realistic crime drama that, from season to season, expands to become a sad and angry critique of a city that systematically fails the marginalized citizens within its boundaries. Yes, it sounds high-minded and elitist. After all, on the surface, it's just a show of cops dealing with corner drug dealers, with lots of profanity and shocking violence. But there's a reason everyone who's seen all the seasons so far (4 seasons, and a last season coming up) is reduced to incoherent, high-minded praise like "complex and multi-faceted," "ingenious," and "the culminating artistic achievement of our time". Yeah, "The Wire" does that to you. And yeah, it's ironic that I'm plugging these 2 TV shows after saying TV shows are bad for society....well, these are the exceptions.
I have had a couple first hand experiences with mental illness. When I was 10 years old my older sister, who was 28 at the time, was diagnosed with OCD. She was in and out of a mental health facility, was perscribed various medications, and underwent electric shock therapy. Her illness disrupted her own family (her, her husband and son)and disrupted our family (mom, dad, and siblings). I am not sure how my family adapted to and resolved this crisis because I was too young to fully comprehend what was going on, but we did. My family turned to our faith and church community. We also relied on community members, family friends, and extended family. Social support was not the only important factor in overcoming this battle with OCD, the medical and psychological resources my sister had available to her helped her tremendously. Once she found the right psychiatrist, she was back to herself in no time. However, it took about a year to find the right psychiatrist.
Knowing a good psychiatrist definitely prevented my family from going through the same experience when my mother experienced a case of depression. My father losing his job, me turning 16 and becoming less dependent, and her experiencing menopause all contributed to an increase in anxiety. Even though we knew of a great psychiatrist it was still very difficult. My mom knew something was wrong, however, she did not want to give into having to see a psychiatrist and going on medications. Eventually she decided to see the psychiatrist, but she told him what treatment she was willing/unwilling to recieve.
I found the topic of ambiguous loss to be very interesting. My sister was diagnosed with OCD and was placed on various medications, some which worked and others which did not.While trying to find the treatment right for her, she was not herself. She was not fully capable of caring herself, much less for her 4 year old son. It was a very frustrating time because my family didn't know if we were going to get her back. This is the closest I have come to losing someone close to me so it is hard for me to judge whether or not the stress my family experienced during this time of illness and uncertainty is worse than coping with death.
I think that death is still a taboo subject in today's society...which is a paradox because, like someone posted earlier, movies, TV shows, and songs feature violence and death regularly. But when it comes to family and community, how many of us are comfortable talking seriously to someone about death, especially to someone who is facing it or has experienced loss? We use terms like "pass away" or "not with us anymore", but we don't say "died". And from an earlier class discussion, we talked about finances, wills, etc., how few people have these, and how one of the barriers to creating one is facing the reality of death. Death is one of the few guarantees, so why is it so hard to face?
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