Health Check Podcast: How to help parents who have special needs children

Senior Health Correspondent

Updated

Published

Feb 02, 2022, 06:00 PM

Synopsis: Every first and third Wednesday of the month, The Straits Times helps you make sense of health matters that affect you.

If you’re raising a child with special needs, such as physical, cognitive, behavioural challenges, you are not alone. You deserve the time to look after yourselves and there is comfort to be found from families who have children with special needs.

In this episode, Joyce Teo, a senior health correspondent with The Straits Times, speaks with Dr Lim Hong Huay, an epidemiologist and developmental paediatrician who has two children with ADHD and mild autism, about how parents of special needs children can avoid burnout. She also talks about how friends and family can help parents of special needs children and what the public should (and should not) do when they encounter a parent having a challenging episode with a special needs child.

Dr Lim founded CaringSG in 2020, when many special education schools and early intervention programmes had to stop their services and families were stuck at home. That worsened the exhaustion, burnout and mental health issues that some caregivers had.

Highlights (click/tap above):

02:54 How friends and family can help

10:46 How parents can avoid burnout

14:06 How the public can help

16:08 Tips for parents of special needs children

CaringSG: https://caring.sg/

SG Enable: https://www.sgenable.sg/

Produced by: Joyce Teo (joyceteo@sph.com.sg), Ernest Luis and Fa'izah Sani

Edited by: Fa'izah Sani

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