Ennio Fuentes Widdekind, Jacob
DEP2000 4/18/2013

Discussion of:
“Coping Humor” For Children With Disabilities and Family Functioning
By: Alicja Rieger & J. Patrick McGrail

I chose the article “Coping Humor and Family Functioning in Parents Of Children

With Disabilities” because its methods are ones that I used to get through the struggles of

having a family member with disabilities. This article talks about how humor has been

used to relief the stressful lifestyle of both the person with a disability and the family that

endures this. Surprisingly using humor as a tool to cope with this has made nothing less

than every day’s life easier and gives a sense of calm to take on the furthermore

challenges that will come. Having a disability isn’t something that was chosen, it’s a

challenge given to any individual that can be overcome with support or proper ways to

deal with it.

Findings

The objective of the article was to investigate whether coping humor in families

that had a child with a disability could strengthen the family functioning and make the

child’s every day life easier to handle.

The Coping Humor Scale (CHS) and the Family Adaptability and Cohesion Evaluation

Scales (FACES IV) were used to measure this investigation. The hypothesis was that

coping humor would relief stress and FACES IV would set balance in both the cohesion

and flexibility of the child and the family.

Seventy-Two parents of children that had autism and multiple other disorders were used

and completed the CHS and the FACES IV scales. Qualitative evidence exists that shows

that humor was essential for a families ability to cope with something as severe and

enduring as having a child with a disability. The idea is to counter act optimism and

sorrow with a humorous outlook.

The seventy-two families used for the study 100% of them identified themselves as the

parents of the subject undergoing the study. The ages of the children were from 3 to 21

years of age. They were on average all well-educated families with a mixture of

Caucasian, black or African American, Latino or Hispanic, and native American.

The subjects were told to identify a given stressful situation on a 1 to 4 strongly agree to

strongly disagree multiple choice answer based on the question given. Answers like “I

usually look for something comical to say when I am in tense situations” were provided.

Although some were not able to make up their mind on a set answer, there were enough

to make a good work-study conclusion to the research.

Application During the time of trial and testing, Rieger and Mcgrail noticed that children with

disabilities such as: autism, intellectual disabilities, cerebral palsy, traumatic brain injury,

attention deficit disorder (ADD), emotional disorder, sickle-cell blood disease, hearing

impairment, and multiple disabilities managed to apply humor to lessen the mental stress

and gain a new perspective as to how the rest of the world viewed them.

It is as if the patient develops a new way of going about his everyday life and getting a

“kick” out of it.

I’ve had to endure a close family member with a mental disability and deal with it on an

everyday basis. He was diagnosed with autism and we were told to make him believe that

“everyone is laughing with you, not at you”. A simple phrase like that repeated over time

can change a child’s (with a mental disability) mind to believe it. Children at an early

age are like sponges, everything they learn, hear, see is soaked up and for that reason

we as the family members and parents can mold his/her mind into what we want.

It is evident that to get a complete and accurate result, more research is needed.

Conclusion

We are limited to get a 100% accurate analysis because we cannot test every

subject that has or has had a mental disability. Authorization by a guardian isn’t always

given, and the ones that did were not shown to give full attention and involvement as they

may have needed. Moreover, the researchers were not given direct contact with the

subjects to keep an accurate track record of the study as needed. Secondly, since mothers

tend to be the primary caregivers for the children, results may show a partial view.

If I could make a suggestion for this research to be done again, I would ask of parents

who, when recently informed that their child has a mental disability, would come in to

the doctor’s office (when scheduled for an appointment) and the doctor would perform or

give the tasks to the patient that we need to keep an accurate and responsive track of the

study. This way we can see how long it would take to see results or how the results would

change over time as the subject grows.

I strongly agree with using Coping Humor as a technique to de-stress the life of a child

with a disability and parents or guardians to enforce this thought process upon their loved

one. Everyone has a right to feel and be treated as a “normal” person in our socially

inclined world. The study was very well managed, given the limitations and the

hypothesis was supported by the result that children that learned how to use Coping

Humor as a strategy to overcome a mental disability began to cope with it differently in a

way that it would not harm them psychologically. This information and report should be

provided to anyone that has a loved with a mental disability so they can learn that there is

hope for them to live a normal life with the stress of a regular family. The effort and

involvement is needed, and that all depends on the individual that wants a solution to

their the situation.