Such repeated negative experiences only aggravate the difficult process of remaining in the highest stage of adjustment. Parents, like professionals, readily perceive the inhumanity of persons who show little or no understanding or caring toward persons with disabilities or their caretakers. Peoples' actions, more frequently than events, cause parents, and the child, to regress into states of anger, frustration, or other earlier stages of feelings and behaviors. Most parents need assistance to progress positively and without debilitating delay through the stages of adjustment. Their progress toward a level of reasonable acceptance, closure, and reconstruction includes an accurate understanding of reality, at least as they reach the usual and customary benchmarks in their child's development.
Professionals can help parents achieve a balance between their hopes and reality.
While most parents want and have a need for professionals to be truthful as a prerequisite to being recognized as trustworthy persons with credibility, they do not need information that is bleak and replete with dismal prognosis. The majority of parents will come to understand the realities and implications regarding their child's achievement as the various stages of development are reached and passed. This, especially, is true if parents believe that educators put the child's needs foremost in designing appropriate educational and related services. Not every parent may experience these stages of grief, suffering, and acceptance. However, as professionals, we need to be prepared to help parents work through these stages if needed.