COMMON ADAPTIVE TASKS FACING PARENTS OF CHILDREN WITH CHRONIC CONDITIONS

Parents of chronically ill or disabled children face a number of common tasks in adapting to their child's condition. These tasks are delineated from the literature on theory, research and clinical issues and are discussed in relation to their documented importance to family adaptation, the difficulties parents have in managing the tasks and effective coping strategies parents can use to accomplish the tasks. The implications of utilizing adaptive tasks as an organizing framework for assessing and intervening with parents of children with chronic conditions are discussed.