To help or to hurt

Every once in awhile, I come across a situation that just gets me irritated and angry to the point that, well, smacking someone actually seems like a reasonable option.  Even though I know it's not.  Really.  I do.

One such situation is when a parent cannot accept that their child has legitimate difficulties and either ignores it to the point that it has long term implications on whether or not their child fails or succeeds, or, more often, blames it on the other parent. This is incredibly frustrating from the perspective of a parent who is accepting of what is going on, and is willing to move hell and high water to give her child the skills to help himself, to have a good, positive, life, being able to do whatever it is that his heart desires.  

My situation is not like this.  My husband knows - admits - that Hassaan has these issues and this is what is going on.  With the ADHD, it is strongly suspected that my husband has it as well.  In helping Hassaan, we are attempting to help him make better choices than his father has.  Much as I love my husband and my children love their father, he has made some decisions that have affected not only him but the entire family negatively.  So anything I can can do to help my son not make those decisions, I will do - be it behavioural therapy, drug therapy or a combination of both.

But I have talked to other parents, mothers mostly, who's husbands refuse to acknowledge that their child (usually son) has issues that he needs help with.  Maybe the father is feeling failure that his son isn't "perfect."  Who knows.  But whatever it is, it's doing not but harming the child.  But how do you get it through someone's head that to admit that there's a problem, to accept help, isn't to admit failure or defeat, but simply to admit a challenge?