A Family Affair
Marissa Sweat Evans
I am a mother and advocate for my son as well as others with disabilities. My oldest was diagnosis with cerebral palsy, epilepsy and autism.
Being a parent of any child is hard but being a parent of a child with special needs is sometimes harder.
Especially when you have more than one child and the other children don’t require as much attention as the child with special needs.
The only time I have trouble trying to balance out time is when my son is admitted into the hospital.
Because that’s when I can’t be there for our other two children. Which is when I feel my worst.
It makes me feel as though I’m a bad parent because they all need me but thankfully our girls understand that sometimes their brother needs us more.
When Jaylen is well, we are always busy doing something. And it’s always something that the whole family can do.
Our girls love including their brother in any and everything even when we're just doing things at home.
We also try to do things with them that doesn’t include Jaylen because we don’t want them to think that they must settle for things because its what’s best for him.
So sometimes I or their Dad will take them to the nail salon or to this museum they love that Jaylen absolutely hate.
When we're on vacation my husband will sit in the room with Jaylen while I take the girls different places that’s either not accessible or things Jaylen show no interest in.
For the most part, everything we do everyone seems to like (but me).
Our favorite place to go is anywhere that have rides. Jaylen love rides and doesn’t seem to be afraid of anything.
Our girls also enjoy rides to so it’s always a win-win situation.
As far as the home it gets hard because Jaylen demand attention from everyone.
So, most of the time when we're home its everybody with Jaylen.
If anything needs to be done with the girls I usually do it because Jaylen prefers his Daddy over me.
So, our family basically enjoy being around each other and doing something that everyone can do.
Balancing time isn’t really an issue unless Jaylen is in the hospital or were home.