3 things additional needs Christian dads need to know

Mark Arnold gives three ways a Christian dad can respond positively to the news he has a child with additional needs

Whenever I meet additional needs dads, whether in a group or on their own, if I talk with them for long enough at least one of these three themes emerges. Themes that fill them with sadness, regret, pain, grief. Themes that additional needs dads don’t have to journey with, but most do… sometimes all of them.

You don’t “have to be the strong one”

This one comes up time, after time, after time. Dads who identify their role in the family as being the strong one, the one who tries to hold it all together. It’s a very manly, ‘blokeish’, approach to take, convincing ourselves that we’ve got it all together. By inference, that makes the mum the ‘weak one’, the one who is falling apart, the one who struggles most.

Dads need to learn from mums to be more willing to share how they are feeling, to be vulnerable

My experience of meeting loads of mums and dads is that this couldn’t be further from the truth. Scratch beneath the tough exterior of dads, get them to start opening up about how they feel (yes, guys can talk about their feelings!), even get them sharing in a group of other dads about their child, their worries, the things they find hard, and they are as ……