Children's Needs – Parenting Capacity - Digital Education Resource ...

154 Children’s Needs – Parenting Capacitymy cheeks burnt and the semi-darkness seemed to be full of eyes. She was goingout from us, becoming strange, becoming possessed, and I didn’t want anyone elseoutside the family to know or notice.(Deane 1997, pp.140–141)A consequence of this wish to keep the family’s distress and disintegration hiddenis that children are less willing to risk social encounters. Friendships and socialinteraction are restricted. Often families, including children, adopt roles to try tocontrol and deal with the difficult behaviour of the drug- or alcohol-using parent.These roles may seem to be a way of coping but can be destructive.Keeping information about parents’ difficulties contained within the family is notalways possible, or indeed wise. Sadly, when information leaks out children’s fear ofdiscrimination and stigma can become a reality....They were picking on me because they just thought, I think they thought thatI was different and that’s it. Sometimes like they start saying ‘Look at your mumshe’s got bad problems and she...’, stuff I can’t repeat, it gets me really upset. Theykept on saying that she was a tramp.(Girl aged 11 years, quoted in Aldridge and Becker 2003, p.81)Self-care skillsExpected self-care skillsChildren of this age will be able to help adults or older siblings with householdchores. Similarly, children are able to help look after younger siblings or assist inthe care of sick or disabled parents. However, children between the ages of 5 and 10years are still too young to adequately shoulder the parental role and an adult shouldalways retain responsibility for their own and their children’s care.Possible impact on self-care skillsWhile all children help their parents in a range of ways, when parents’ problems aresevere children may be expected to assume too much responsibility for themselvesand others within the family.Charles (aged 10 years) is a resilient boy, but he was having to behave like a mucholder child: he had to look after himself, take responsibility for getting to schooland to generally care for himself because of his dad’s serious drinking. Dad wasunable to offer reasonable parenting ... The son and father had in effect changedroles – Charles had become the carer, with Dad the dependent person.(Social worker, quoted in Cleaver et al. 2007, p.205)Parental problems may mean that children have to grow up quickly and takeresponsibility for a parent who may often be unwell, incapacitated or in danger