Life as a SEN mum

If you follow my social media accounts you’ll know I talked this week about how easy it is feel overwhelmed as a parent, and in particular as a parent of SEN children.

It happens to us all at some point and we all deal with it in different ways. In this crazy fast paced world it’s almost inevitable that more of us than ever find ourselves overwhelmed more often than we would probably care to admit. I have heard that as millennials we suffer more than any generation. With the pressures put on us by previous generations, and the increase in technology and social media feeding us seemingly perfect lives.

Whenever we see those around us struggling we’re happy to offer help and advice, but less willing to take our own advice. In reality that’s exactly what we need to do, take the advice we happily dish out to others and try not to put too much pressure on ourselves, after all we are not superhuman.

Given the time of year I’m really starting to feel it, the lack of sleep, constantly trying to organise everything ahead of the festive season. There’s also other things going on that I won’t go into in this blog. All this on top of the general pressures of parenting, then we add on the extra pressures when you have SEN children and eventually the smallest thing will trigger a complete breakdown.

Obviously the best thing to do to avoid this is to take some lf the weight off our shoulders. Weather hits just admitting we can’t do everything and be everything to everyone and trying to allow ourselves a little grace, or sharing the load with someone else. But in reality it isn’t always that straightforward, there might not be anyone to share the load with, and allowing ourselves a little grace can require a whole change in our mentality. If you’ve spent your life believing that everything is your responsibility then it’s going to be extremely hard to change that mindset. This is generally what I struggle with, the belief that everything is on my shoulders and a feeling of failure when everything isn’t done.

Whilst I know I need to sit down every now and then and take some time to myself it leads to a cycle of overloading myself and burning myself out. So what am I doing to avoid it? Honestly I know I’ll probably never avoid it, but I’ve started setting time limits to complete tasks. If it can’t be done in that time I know I can go back another time but at least it isn’t consuming my whole day. There are other little things, like finding people to talk to about anything other than the things that are stressing you to take your mind off it and allow you to go in with a fresh head, or taking 5 minutes at the end of each day to do skincare and just help to wind down. Also I’ve found it’s important to be able to admit things are getting too much, often just admitting it can help.