Lessons from life

Rosie Spencer was one of the people featured in our book Parenting under pressure.

Rosie Spencer occupies a niche in society defined by her role as a mother with learning difficulties. She may not be typical of other parents but parents like her typically face the same sorts of problems and pressures. By looking closely at her life it is possible to identify the wider social forces that bear more generally on people in her position through the imprint they leave on her biography.

Rosie Spencer provides a working example of Scheherazade's dictum that 'one life is simply all lives lived separately'. The following practice points stand out among the general lessons that Rosie Spencer's story reveals.

1. Be wary of assuming that parents with learning difficulties do not have the same feelings of care and affection for their children as other parents or that their family bonds are weaker.

2. Parenting is about more than child-rearing.

3. Be wary of adopting too narrow a view of the parenting task.

4. Assessment, intervention and support must have regard to the functioning of the family as a unit.

5. The parent-child relationship may be worth supporting even when a parent cannot meet all the developmental needs of the child.

6. The need for belonging on the part of children may outweigh any deficits that outsiders see in the competence of their parents.

7. Beware of seeing parents' needs only in terms of their learning difficulties.

8. Beware the danger of segregated services leading to segregated needs and segregated lives.

9. Practitioners should take care not to undermine the socially valued aspects of the parenting role.

10. Practitioners should organise services and support so that parents experience being competent and feel in control.

11. Service providers must be ready to accept that parents with learning difficulties are likely to exert heavy demands on their resources.

12. Practitioners must be aware of their capacity for exacerbating the stress on families and augmenting the problems they face.

13. Practitioners must seek to avoid seeing parents only through the distorting mirror of existing services.

14. The attitude of practitioners towards parents is as important as their actions; how support is delivered matters as much as what support is delivered.

Further reading:

'Knowing Rosie Spencer' (Chapter 7) and 'Reading Rosie Spencer' (Chapter 8) in Parenting under pressure: mothers and fathers with learning difficulties.