A Gift for Your Child:How to Supercharge Your Self-Care for Better Parenting
Finding the time and summoning the energy to take better care of yourself as a parent of a child with special needs can feel like a full-time job. But it is a vital need to address - burnout from the highly challenging tasks you face every day, often without any help, will put you and your health at risk.
And as a parent, it can feel like there are insurmountable obstacles standing in the way of any kind of care you can give to yourself. At Prosper Parenting, LLC, we work with parents to create a plan that focuses on parent health and wellness first so that the entire family can thrive, rather than just survive. After all, how can you as a parent give your best to your child when you have not given any attention to your own needs? Despite that our culture deems an excess of busyness and stress admirable, the cost of neglecting your own needs can be far too high when it comes to parenting children with diverse needs.
Caring for a child with special needs is a full-time job — and an overwhelming one at that, especially if you do not have adequate support. Without enough help, parents may be headed toward caregiver burnout, which negatively affects everyone in the family.
The consequences of chronic stress related to raising kids who have intense needs are real. Studies show that parents of children with special needs are far more likely than others to experience:
Anxiety
Depression
Insomnia
Fatigue
Chronic Stress
The risks, both emotional and physical, to caregivers of challenging children are important to address, for the children’s sake as well as the parents’. Below, we look at common contributors to caregiver stress and offer some suggestions to help parents stay healthy, balanced and committed to their kids.
Accepting limits to what you can do
Experts agree that part of avoiding or lessening burnout is to challenge the idea that you are the only one who can help and there is no limit to what you need to do.
Dr. Wendy Blumenthal, an Atlanta-based psychologist, says she sees mothers who reach a breaking point because they are driven to shoulder all the responsibility for their high-needs child. “These supermoms — they’re not sleeping, they’re constantly anxious, calling every doctor they can think of.”
“These parents feel like they should be able to do it all and the first thing to go is basic self-care,” says Elaine Taylor Klaus, the cofounder of Impact ADHD, which offers training for parents of kids with ADHD and other conditions. “There are long-term risks of caring for these kids,” she says. “And one of them is that parents burnout.” When the days get especially tough, it is very common to find that parents wind up neglecting the most basic aspects of taking care of themselves such as:
Getting enough sleep every night
Staying hydrated
Getting regular exercise
Spending time away from children
When you have a child whose behavior is difficult or whose needs are challenging, feeling cut off from support and empathy can contribute to the stress. Colleagues, neighbors, friends, family — even your spouse can seem to be on another planet. “
More than ever, parents – and Moms especially – need a clear-cut way to regain some sense of attention and care of their needs, and I am not talking about just the basics. It is likely not quite enough to have the chance to grocery shop alone or take a longer than usual shower to feel revived. Parenting is about nurturing your child, but it is also about nurturing yourself so that you can be the best at what you do, at least more often than not.
Prosper Parenting is here to meet the needs of parents who are falling short of meeting their own needs amid incredibly challenging – and sometimes nearly impossible – tasks on a daily basis. Give me a call at 703-507-3253 to learn more today!
