HIV INFECTION AND ITS EFFECTS ON INTERPERSONAL RELATIONS: RELATIONSHIPS WITH YOUR CHILDREN-PROBLEMS WITH TELLING
Many of the problems people with HIV infection have with their children are, on the surface, the same problems they have with any other relative: how to tell them about the infection, how to deal with their worries, how not to be a burden on them. Under the surface, however, the problems are complicated by the uniqueness of the parent-child relationship. Parents and children are not equal partners in a relationship. Parents take care of children, not the reverse. Young children truly are helpless and cannot care for their parents. Older children may be unable emotionally to care for their parents, or the parents may be unable to accept care. Problems with Telling-In many ways, telling your children about HIV infection is different from telling most other relatives. People feel responsible for their children; they want to protect them against fear and worry and life’s hard facts. They think of themselves as their children’s safe haven, and they want to avoid bringing uncertainty into their lives. As a result, many people decide to put off telling their children until they have to. They will have to tell, they say, if they get an AIDS-defining illness. “With this virus,” said Helen, “you don’t know anything definite about the future. I have two kids, aged sixteen and seventeen, who live with their father. I will only tell them if I start getting really sick. They would be anxious, a little for themselves even, though they would believe I wouldn’t hurt them. They’d be anxious about my dying.” Dean also has a child by an earlier marriage: “I have a son, who’s pretty well grown now. He knows about me. I told him only when I hit the AIDS stage.” Sometimes, in spite of their plans, people find that they must tell their children even before their first AIDS-defining illness. People in the stage called ARC are often fatigued and bothered with many minor illnesses. The children, who always see more than they seem to, sense that their parents are unwell and preoccupied. The children worry. Sometimes they suspect the truth; sometimes they come to entirely wrong conclusions. One mother had two children she wasn’t telling about her diagnosis. The children noticed her frequent sicknesses and doctor appointments, talked to each other about it, and decided she was dying of cancer. The children were upset: one child became a workaholic, going to school and then working into the night until early the next morning; the other got into trouble at school. When their mother finally told them she was infected with HIV and wasn’t dying any time soon, they were almost relieved. At the least, they no longer had to deal with uncertainty. Telling your children you have HIV infection usually also means telling them how you got the virus. People want their children to respect and look up to them. They don’t want to look vulnerable or fallible. Most people, however, get infected in ways that society judges harshly: through using drugs intravenously or through gay sexual relations. Often people have hidden these behaviors from their children. People worry their children will make the same judgment society makes, and reject them. Drug users especially worry that they have set a bad example. Helen is proud that her children do not use drugs and have never seen her use drugs: “I’d rather die than lose my kids’ respect,” she said. One couple with two children told them that the father (who had HIV infection) had cancer. Several years before, the father had experimented with bisexuality and had become infected. Both parents were ashamed of this. The mother said she didn’t want them to see her as a secret-keeper, but she couldn’t tell them their father is bisexual. Dean and his eighteen-year-old son managed to resolve the issue of homosexuality the way Dean and his parents resolved it. He talked openly and lovingly about his life and his son’s place in it, and his son’s relation to his partner. “Now my son just accepts it,” Dean said. “He says, ‘Dad is gay and has AIDS.’ He brings his friends to our house. When the kids are around, my partner and I hold back our normal affections and don’t use terms of endearment with each other.” Sometimes children have more trouble with the situation than Dean’s son, and are upset at their father’s bisexuality. Sometimes they dislike their father’s partner. In general, people find telling the truth works out best. They naturally feel sadness and guilt and regret about the truth, and those feelings will complicate how they talk to their children. They find that the simplest truth works; they say things like, “You know I used to have a drug problem. At that time, I did things I wasn’t proud of, and I got AIDS.” Children in their teens understand this sort of information best.
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