I rarely watch Dr. Phil. I find it completely ludicrous that anyone would believe for one second that people’s problems could be solved in a 60-minute show. And while, for many problems (and many people) the “suck it up” message is the right one, there are others (like parenting children with disabilities) for which the answers are not that easy.

So, when I heard that Dr. Phil was doing a show yesterday on parenting children with autism, I was only mildly interested. So it was completely by accident that I watched it. We had just happened to return home after LuLu’s speech evaluation and I was turning the TV on so she could watch Discovery Health.

Much to my surprise, the first child profiled, Luz, looked a great deal like my LuLu. He was physically and verbally very threatening, and the family's entire world revolved around Luz's violence. LuLu’s reaction to watching this kid was to be overwhelmed. She immediately started screaming at the TV about how out-of-control he was and that he needed to be punished. I switched the TV to Discovery Health to calm her down and scurried off to another TV to see what Dr. Phil was going to say next. (And I realized that LuLu doesn’t see herself as being like that at all – she is truly so hijacked by the emotion that she can’t even realistically identify similar behaviors in others, but instead her anxiety was triggered by his threats to his mother.)

The take-away message I got from that portion of the show was that the divorce rate among couples parenting a child with autism is 86%! Wow, that’s not very good odds. In this situation, the father was a firefighter and working 24-hour shifts, a total of 70-80 hours a week. And the mom was parenting her son with autism as well as two other children, feeling overwhelmed, lonely, frustrated and hopeless…and she missed her husband.

Dr. Phil zeroed in on this being one of their “biggest” problems. I beg to differ that this is their biggest problem…but it is the problem that is more likely to be fixed in the 60-minute show format. In fact, I was disappointed that Dr. Phil didn’t have a miracle cure for Luz’s threatening and violent ways…although I didn’t really expect him to.

Anyway, Dr. Phil advised the husband to restructure his work schedule to be home more and more available to his wife, who he said was reaching her breaking point. I thought about how this applied in our lives, with Super Dad on the road much of the weeknights, and me here holding down the fort, including having LuLu home with me for school all day. Some days I truly do feel consumed.

But the two major differences I saw between us and this couple were that the husband seemed to be using the work as an escape and the couple wasn’t discussing the impact of their son’s autism on the family and their marriage. That’s not the way things are at our house! Super Dad hates that he travels as much as he does. I’m grateful that he has the job he has, because it’s one he both enjoys and provides for us. Because he has some flexibility, he’s able to schedule his trips around times I really do need him home (like for LuLu’s procedure last Friday).

And, one thing we do a lot of around here, is talk about the hard stuff. We attack it straight on. This is something Super Dad taught me early in our marriage…to say what you’re thinking. And let’s face it, if you’re parenting a child with a significant disability, you’re thinking about it 24/7. It is all encompassing and to deny that would be like ignoring an elephant in your living room.

My heart aches as I think about the 86% of the marriages that are failing because of autism. I wonder if the statistics are any different for those whose children have such troubling conditions as bipolar, reactive attachment disorder or schizophrenia. I doubt it…unless they’re higher, since the lack of awareness among professionals as to what family life is like is probably greater with these disorders. And while right now I’m feeling pretty confident that Super Dad and I will end up in the top 14%, I know that it will only happen if we are diligent with taking good care of our relationship.

Parenting a child with a disability isn’t fair. Life becomes doubly and triply hard in so many ways…not the least of which is maintaining your marriage. Finding the time, money and even the babysitters so you can truly reconnect – whether it’s by dating, going to couple’s therapy or just sitting together staring at each other – can be nearly impossible. And because it’s human nature to always think someone has it “easier” or the other person isn’t doing it “right”, we can quickly start eyeing our spouse with envy because even their plight looks easier than our own. But taking care of your marriage…just like taking care of yourself…is a MUST DO!

“You can hang together or hang separately,” is the message that I return to. And even if the ship is sinking, at least we’re on it together!

Photo Credit