As we all know, being a parent means juggling multiple responsibilities: professional responsibilities, parental responsibilities, social and individual responsibilities, etc. Of course, we want to offer the best to our children in a family environment that is conducive to their development and growth. In the search for “parental perfection”, many parents forget themselves and develop behaviors that, in the medium or long term, can considerably harm their mental health.
In this article, we present an overview of this problem, which affects more parents than one might think. Advice offered by our health and social services professionals is also presented to help parents maintain balance in the many facets of their lives.
Being overwhelmed as a parent, is it taboo?
Let’s start by stating this without taboo: as a parent, it is normal to sometimes feel overwhelmed by your multiple responsibilities. For many families, this phenomenon has been exacerbated by the pandemic. Indeed, many parents found themselves teleworking and therefore spending more time at home, often in the company of their children. In some cases, the role of parent also had to be combined with the role of teacher, while some children had to be home-schooled. This was in addition to the responsibilities that parents already had to deal with. In addition, fewer social activities and meetings outside the home took away from many parents their outlet for parental stress and pressure.
We believe it is important to talk about parental burnout, especially in the current context, in order to break the taboo surrounding it. In fact, on our blog, we have devoted an entire article to parental burnout, its signs and how to prevent it.
Tips to keep your balance as a parent
It’s important to keep your balance so you don’t feel overwhelmed by your parenting role. Nevertheless, it’s something that can be learned, especially for people who tend to put a lot of pressure on themselves to achieve perfection in the many facets of their lives. We therefore present 5 tips, offered by the social workers at Clinique GO™. These professionals are qualified to intervene with people who are living through a complex social situation, in order to help them deal with it and maintain, or improve, their quality of life.
- Accept negative emotions: As a parent, you must know how to accept the negative emotions you experience within the family, and especially how to express them in a healthy way. Expressing sadness or discontent to your children means showing them that it is possible to communicate negative emotions, rather than letting them affect your actions and behaviors.
- Establish a family routine: this advice applies particularly to weekdays. It is essential to establish a routine that takes into account the needs of all family members and everyone’s responsibilities (school or work). In today’s context, establishing a routine helps to put some calm into the hectic pace of life, in addition to giving the impression of being in better control. It goes without saying that calm and control are greatly needed with the pandemic, which is causing a lot of uncertainty.
- Making to-do lists: It may seem trivial, but making lists of tasks and things to do helps relieve some of the stress, in addition to becoming a potential source of motivation.
- Keep some time for yourself: we can never repeat enough that to preserve your mental health, you need to give yourself time to indulge in your passions and hobbies that are important to you. These little “Me, Myself and I” moments are real stress valves, and more than that, they help preserve the balance between responsibilities and personal well-being. They can be simple moments dedicated to reading, an outdoor sporting activity, or keeping in touch with friends. It is important to plan times when you are taking care of your own well-being, not thinking about the well-being of children and other family members.
- Seek professional help: with the pandemic, our social contacts are really limited, which can give the impression that we have a less good social network to support us in our responsibilities. We have less access to relatives and friends who could normally advise us, support us and offer us a moment’s respite when we needed it. When we feel the need, we should not hesitate to seek professional help, particularly from a social worker.
If you feel overwhelmed by your parenting role, know that professionals are there to provide you with the support you need and to help you get through any challenges you encounter. Clinique GO™ has a large team of health and social services professionals who are there to meet multiple needs, so don’t hesitate to consult them.
Approuvé par Francis Desjardins
