ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on chronic disorders diagnosed at birth or very early childhood which have serious implications for the child's normal development. One such set of disorders, including mental retardation, infantile autism, and cerebral palsy are classified as developmental disabilities and are cognitively and/or physically handicapping conditions. Psychologists, sociologists, and social workers have drawn extensively upon the concept of the family life cycle as a useful framework for understanding the transitions that people experience through the course of their lives in a family. Many parents have angry stories to tell about how they first learned their child's diagnosis. The concept of chronic sorrow is in keeping with the notion of the family life cycle in that it acknowledges the impact of various life cycle events upon the family and their view of the handicapped child. Sad and difficult as the problems of raising a severely disabled child sometimes are, these experiences have parallels in other forms of family crisis.
