The Educational Implications of Chronic Illness in Children: A Study of Parents’ Perspectives
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Date
2022
Authors
Pham, Nhi
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Abstract. The challenges of parenting a child with a long term illness drastically changes the family’s lifestyle. As efforts become focused on managing the child’s health, their education is overlooked, raising the risk of potentially developing deficiencies in the skills that are crucial to the child’s ability to successfully adapt to society. This study aims to explore the potential obstacles that prevent parents from being able to prioritize the education of their ill child. The data sample consists of text from ten blog posts written by mothers raising a child with a complex condition. The text was compared to a dataset of words related to education and words related to emotions to reveal the extent to which education is prioritized by this particular group of parents. The results revealed that parents’ primary concerns are generally more about the emotional wellbeing of their ill child and family rather than the child’s education. Several factors that support these findings are highlighted and efforts to expand the scope of understanding for this topic by exploring the perspectives of other family members are suggested.