How Raising a Child with LD Affected My Marriage

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by Sally Quinn
Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Here's what they don't tell you about what happens to your marriage when you have a learning disabled child.

A study published last year in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology showed that parents with LD children are nearly twice as likely to divorce or separate as couples who have children without those problems.

Obviously, when a child can't focus, pay attention, can't sit still, can't understand simple directions,is inarticulate and seemingly can't learn,( and therefore behaves differently), it is extraordinarlly stressful to be around him or her for long periods of time.The patience required is almost inhuman.

The frustrations, the anxiety, the shame and the sadness are difficult enough. The really hard part, though, is that fathers and mothers deal very differently with their learning disabled children. Fathers are much less likely to accept that their child has a problem and tend to downplay the seriousness of the situation. Particularly if the child is a son, fathers will go into denial, or sometimes get angry at what is happening. A girl is, in many men's  minds, to be protected. A boy is the protector. How can he be a man if he can't protect himself?

This leaves the mother to face the reality of the situation, to bear the brunt of caretaking, dealing with doctors, therapists,and teachers, not to mention the children themselves. I think that the more you love the child the more difficult it is.

Ben and I would go to the country, for instance and he would work out in the woods for 6 or 7 hours leaving me alone in the cabin with a toddler who couldn't sit still to be read to for more than 15 minutes.  

I would get a bad report from a doctor, therapist or teacher and Ben would not accept it. The more upset I would get, the more remote he would get. The more separated we would get, the angrier we would get at each other.

My lowest moment may have been when Quinn was 6 or 7 and had been in the hospital for a few weeks. (He also had serious medical problems). I was so depressed that I could hardly function. Ben and I were barely speaking to each other. One week at the end of June I wore the same baggy yellow t-shirt (I hate yellow) and the same baggy white cotton pants every day for a week as they got dirtier and dirtier. At the end of the week it was my birthday and Ben brought home a dozen yellow roses.

How did we survive?  For one thing we had a great family therapist. Ultimately we really loved each other and we both adored Quinn more than anything in the world. It was that love for each other and for him that got us through the roughest patches. But don't for a moment ever think it was easy. 

Most importantly, try to understand and be sympathetic to one anothers' motivations. Remember you are both acting out fear, frustration and often a sense of helplessness. Men and women have different ways of manifesting those feelings. When i told my husband that I was writing about the problems married couples face when they have a learning disabled child, he replied, "what problems"?