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Essay on Developmental Disabilities in Children
As the degrees of vulnerability among individuals with developmental disabilities is relative, depending on complex interactions among constitutional factors and life's circumstances at different points in the developmental cycle, so their resilience is governed by a similar dynamic interaction among the internal and external resources from which they can draw. Longitudinal studies, like ours, that have followed "at-risk" children from birth to adulthood have found a shifting balance between stressful life events that heighten children's vulnerability and protective factors that enhance their resilience. This balance changes not only with the different stages of the life cycle, but also varies with gender. During the first decades of life, boys tended to be more vulnerable and "at risk" for developmental disabilities; in the second decade of life more girls were susceptible, especially for behavior disorders associated with teenage pregnancies. In the third and fourth decade of life, however, more women than men appeared to make a successful transition into early adulthood and midlife.
However, a significant proportion of those individuals who had "recovered" expressed a persistent need to detach themselves emotionally from parents and siblings whose domestic problems still threatened to engulf them. This was especially true for adult children of alcoholics, some of whom had been physically and emotionally abused when they were growing up (Werner & Smith, 1992). The balancing act between forming new attachments to loved ones of their choice and the loosening of old family ties that evoked painful memories exacted a toll in their adult lives. The price they paid varied from stress-related health problems to certain aloofness in interpersonal relationships, especially among the men, some of whom were still single at age 40.
On the positive side, we found that the opening of opportunities at major life transitions (entry into the world of work, marriage, and parenthood) enabled the majority of the youths with learning disabilities and behavior disorders to rebound in their 20s and 30s.......
