1993 Volume 7 Issue 2 Pages 91-102
In this paper, the necessity of family therapy for the family with a physically handicapped child is reported. The family which has a physically handicapped child usually creates a special family system suitable for a handicapped child and functions as having taken him or her under its protection. However, the handicapped child starts becoming independent as he or she grows and conquers his or her disability. By that time, the family system which has taken the handicapped child under its protection and has come to control him or her had become a fixed system, and as a result, interferes with his or her independence, author calls this state “the fixed family with a physically handicapped child” and urge the need for the family to change the fixed family system by family therapy.
As a concrete approach in such therapy, author makes note of the expectations of the parents. Allowing for the surplus intervention and protection, in that he or she is physically handicapped child, or the surplus expectations over what he or she could do if he or she did his or her best, author distinguish between those things which he or she is able to do, and those things which he or she cannot do, given his or her present capacity, author tells his or her parents that it is constraining for him or her, when they expect too much from him or her regarding those things which he or she is unable to do. As a result, the parents should expect their child to conform according to his or her capacity.
They can now begin to resign themselves to "waiting" for his or her behavior, rather than expecting too much just for their own satisfaction. Only then, for the first time, can the child establish change for himself or herself and behave according to his or her own decision within the family system.
