When your partner is often struggling with symptoms of a chronic illness, parenting can feel overwhelming and lonely.
Parenting is hard on a regular day, but when your partner is often struggling with symptoms of a chronic illness, parenting can also feel overwhelming and lonely. Dr. Nanika Coor offers suggestions for coping with the unique challenges of parenting children while also trying to support your partner and make time to care for yourself.
Project Parenthood is hosted by Dr. Nanika Coor. A transcript and sources are available at Simplecast.
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Hey parents! You're listening to the Project Parenthood podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Nanika Coor, clinical psychologist and respectful parenting therapist. Each week, I’ll introduce you to the same respectful parenting practices that I use to help parents repair and deepen connections with their children. You’ll get tips for cultivating more parental self-compassion, more cooperation from your kids, and more joy, peace, and resilience in your relationship with them.
In today’s episode, I’m talking about how to cope when your parenting partner or spouse has a chronic illness or disease. Stick around till the end for tips on how to make the best use of your support network.
Parenting young kids with a partner who is suffering from a chronic condition is a major source of stress, exhaustion, and uncertainty. As the healthy parent, your role in the family might transition suddenly–you’re not only a carer of children, but depending on the severity of your partner’s illness, you may become the caregiver for your partner as well. Your partner’s illness can begin to consume your family’s life.
It can also feel profoundly physically, emotionally, and socially lonely when your co-parent and partner is often down for the count with their illness. Parenting on your own, shouldering all of the housework and daily family logistics, is overwhelming.
Here are some suggestions for coping when the person you live and parent with suffers from chronic illness:
When you learn your parenting partner has a chronic illness, you might be overwhelmed, and have a lot of fear and pessimism about the future. It makes sense–you had a different vision for what your partnership and parenting life together would be like.
Take the time to grieve the loss of that vision you had. That means both allowing yourself to really feel and experience your deep sadness, and also expressing that sadness to a supportive person who will listen to you without judgment. Working your way through grief and mourning can help you come to a place of acceptance around your partner’s diagnosis, plus the daily functional limitations and necessary accommodations that may come with it.
You just can’t do everything alone–you’ll be burnt out before you know it. It’s difficult for many people to reach out for help, especially when we’ve been socialized to be fiercely independent, and taught to never show weakness or vulnerability. Those internalized individualistic ideals are hard to go against, but try, because the people who care about you want to be there for you.
Your community may not know exactly what you need or want–so tell them! What could someone do that would make your life a bit less stressful, difficult, or overwhelming? Often people want to help but don’t know how, so let folks know that you need someone to take your kids for an hour or two so that you can have some self-care time. Ask someone to help with school pick up or meal prep or housework or listen to you vent.
Comprehensively educate yourself about your partner’s diagnosis. It can be helpful to find first-hand accounts of families going through similar challenges.
Make your children feel included by helping them understand how their parent will be affected by the illness and how they might experience that parent’s physical or social-emotional state due to the illness. Be honest about their chronically ill parent’s physical limitations, yet focus on what their parent can do to spend time with them. Let them know that they can ask you anything about the situation and that you’ll try to give them answers and address their concerns. When your child understands the facts of their parent’s situation, it normalizes it for them. It’s also reassuring, so that they are less likely to be unnecessarily pessimistic, and can cope more effectively.
Be truthful about having to attend doctor or hospital visits. Instead of giving a specific time frame for the ill parent’s return, let your child know that their parent will be home as soon as possible. If an extended stay in the hospital is required, help younger children stay connected even while temporarily apart from their parent. Try to have your child speak to their hospitalized parent every day. Have the child give the parent a toy or stuffed animal, card, or drawing to take with them, and have the parent leave a piece of clothing or jewelry with the child as well. You can also make sure that they each have a photo of each other to keep with them while they’re apart. Having photos of your child, pets, and other family members also helps your partner stay strong, keep fighting, and reminds them that they aren’t alone.
If your child is allowed to visit their parent in the hospital, keep visits short (30 minutes or less) for very young kids and let them know what to expect–that their parent will be in a bed and that there may be a tube in their arm, etc.
On the days when your ill partner has more energy, try to be active in making fun memories as a family. Your partner can play or read with your child a great deal on those days.
On the days when life seems much more challenging for your partner, find creative alternatives. If your partner can’t pick up your child, allow your child to sit close to them instead. Watching videos together or doing role-play games with stuffed animals are other lower-energy ways to spend time together as a family.
Even when your partner is feeling very challenged by their illness, their ability to show a desire to spend time with your child and engage them with attention and humor can go a long way toward giving kids the parental and family closeness they need and crave. Prioritizing strong parent-child relationships can help your children better adjust to having a chronically ill parent.
The ability to do this will be different for each family, but as much as possible resist the urge to put children in caregiving roles. Ideally, kids would be able to play freely, take part in extracurricular school activities, and have a vibrant social life. These are factors that help build a sense of normalcy, agency, and resilience that buffer your child from the potentially negative effects of parental chronic illness.
You can still invite them to help out with household tasks (and allow them to decline). This helps them learn to be and take pride in being a contributing member of the family and also teaches them the tasks involved in running a household–skills that they’ll need throughout their adult lives. Remember, too, that even in the face of their parent’s illness, they still have a need for you to set and hold healthy boundaries.
Try to make sure that your child’s life stays as predictable as possible. Birthdays, holidays, events, and special occasions should happen as they normally would. This helps anchor your child to their own lives, and their own plans, dreams, and goals–which they can lean on in times of their parent’s health uncertainty.
Staying emotionally connected to your partner is important. Carve out some downtime together at home if their illness means you aren’t getting out of the house much. And even though you may now be doing the lion's share of child- and home-care, keep your partner in the loop. If you’re experiencing challenges with your partner’s illness or with the children or other family issues–communicate this to your partner so that you keep the emotional intimacy going.
It’s common for the partner who is not sick to prioritize the ill partner and the children–often to their own detriment. This means taking care of not only your physical health but your emotional health as well. Spend time with friends, engage in enjoyable activities and exercise and feed yourself healthy foods.
For this week’s parenting challenge, make a list of as many family, friends, and acquaintances as you can think of–anyone who’s ever said: “Let me know if I can do anything for you…” So, hold them to it! Let everyone know your situation and ask if they’ll lend a helping hand.
When you’re feeling particularly overwhelmed or you’re in need of particular assistance, start going down the list and reaching out to people. After one person helps out, the next time you need something, ask the next person on your list.
Your loved ones will feel good knowing that you value and trust them, and having the list will remind you that there are people out there who care about you–that you’re not alone. Plus, you won’t have to fear over-burdening one or two good friends or family members.
Let me know how it goes!
It’s not easy to do the huge job of parenting when your partner is chronically ill–and it’s probably not what you imagined for your life. Gaining a good understanding of your partner’s illness and helping your kids understand too can help you all cope with this new reality. Prepare your kids for everything that you can foresee, and keep their routines predictable so that they can better cope with the uncertainties they’ll face. Make sure you’re nurturing the relationship with yourself, your children, your partner, and among the family as a whole–and prioritize fun whenever possible. Remember that you can still live a full and meaningful family life even while your family copes with chronic illness.
I hope that’s helpful! You can learn more about my work with parents at www.brooklynparenttherapy.com and on Instagram at BKPARENTS.
If you have more questions about parenting with a chronically ill partner or spouse, or any other parenting questions or stories, leave me a message at (646) 926-3243 and be sure to let me know if it's okay to use your voice on the show. Or, send an email to parenthood@quickanddirtytips.com. And don’t forget to subscribe to Project Parenthood on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Catch you next week!
dePaula, K. Raising a Family with a Spouse suffering from a Chronic Disease. Daily Mom. https://dailymom.com/nurture/raising-a-family-with-a-spouse-suffering-from-a-chronic-disease/
Dunning Park, S. (2011, January 21) When one parent is sick. The Art of Simple. https://www.theartofsimple.net/when-one-parent-is-sick/
Skolnick, R. B. (2018, October 22) Helping Your Child Cope with a Chronically Ill Parent From the Perspective of the Parent and the Child. Thrive Global. https://thriveglobal.com/stories/helping-your-child-cope-with-a-chronically-ill-parent/.