Parenting the Chronically Ill

Parenting is hard, those who tell you it’s easy are lying to you. Kids are hard, they are great and rewarding, but hard. Figuring out how to parent and navigate in a world of technology, internet and social media is even harder. We have minimal concrete research on how tech heavy learning is going to effect the kids, but it is progress and the way of the future so we push forward, hoping we’re doing what is best. But I digress, my thoughts on parenting in the digital age can be saved for another day.

Parenting is hard, we’ve established that. Every family has their own challenges, and their own struggles. Our family faces medical struggles and challenges. I have long debated sharing our challenges, as it is my kids story to tell, but at this point our stories are so intertwined, I can’t tell my own without delving in to hers as well. My daughter is 8, we shall call her Bit so she can retain her anonymity until she chooses otherwise. She was born with health challenges, which complicated things when she was younger, but as she got older her challenges didn’t get smaller, but larger. So now I am parenting a tiny human who requires extra help staying alive. It’s cool, we make it work, but there are times it doesn’t work.

How do you parent a kid with severe medical challenges, who is already ostracized and left out of so many things? How do you not have the guilt of them…