An attempt to support parents who have young children with handicap through 'life stories'

Abstract

The present study aims at supporting parents who have young children with handicap, using `life stories' of their seniors. I delivered messages of two mothers whose children graduated from School P, a special pre-school for handicapped children and their parents, to the parents who are now going to it. This study consists of two parts. Part 1 shows the necessity of this attempt through illustrating the problems facing young children with handicap and their parents and the way the school helps them. Part 2 illustrates and examines the present attempt. The analysis focuses on the effect of the narrated stories and action of `telling-listening' rather than the content of each story. The result shows that narrated life stories take a role of `mirror' through which tellers (elder mothers) and audience (younger parents) reflect each other, and that this is an important process for the parents so that they can enjoy bringing up their children. This attempt should be the first step to create a network of parents in which parents support each other.View full abstract