The experience of transformation in parents of children with disabilities:

Many parents assert that, despite the considerable and sustained stresses involved in parenting a child with a disability, their experiences have been personally transformative. Increasingly, researchers are advocating for a theoretical understanding of family life management following the diagnosis of disability in a child, with an emphasis on family strengths and resilience, attestations of positive or beneficial effects of parenting, and a wider range of possible parent and family outcomes, including transformation. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to explore the experience of transformation in parents of children with disabilities, based on concurrence between data from ongoing research with parents and broader theoretical assumptions on the nature and experience of life transformation, and to propose a model that identifies several critical processes that may facilitate transformation. Data from interviews with three parents of children with a range of disability characteristics are presented to support both the explanatory value of the model and its utility to practitioners.