Parental Burnout

What comes to your mind when you read or listen to the word Parental burnout?

Parental burnout is mainly a state of having physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion that can lead to depression, chronic anxiety, and illness.

The Symptoms of Parental Burnout 

1.Experiencing physical or emotional exhaustion - Handling tantrums of your child everyday may lead to physical or emotional exhaustion

2. Feeling ashamed and guilty about bad parenting – When your child's school has parent-teacher meetup during your working hours.

3.Feeling overwhelmed or “fed up'' with the role of being a parent – When you are not able to manage worktime and spending time with your child.

4.Feeling emotionally disconnected from their children – Being too much busy with work and not able to spend time with your child.

What is Parental Burnout and what causes it?

Parenting to some can be filled with full of wonders and to some can be full of burden, stress etc. And these situations filled with burdens may happen when parents lack the resources needed to handle stressors related to parenting, they may develop parental burnout.

Accept it or not parenting isn't easy and that's a fact. From the late night feedings and tantrums to meltdowns and math homework, raising these tiny little beings is hard.

Like a job burnout, parental burnout comes with a set of specific symptoms. But do you know what makes the problem worse? It's that that the parents are often ashamed and guilty about having burnt out. There's a stigma associated with parental burnout.

As a result, parents hide what they're going through, and don't reach out for practical and emotional support. And this is very wrong because the society is not ready to ACCEPT IT that parenting is a very hard job indeed!

 Ways to manage parental burnout

1.Talk about it: Open sharing about feelings of burnout can facilitate social support

2. Reevaluate your stress: For parents who reported higher levels of burnout during the pandemic, lockdown alone wasn't the primary risk factor

3. Make small changes

4. Grow your parenting skills, read parenting books or follow parenting blog.

5. Stop saying ‘should'

6.Take microbreaks

7. Be patient with yourself.

8. Allow yourself to feel your feelings

9. Practice self-care

10. Ask for help or hire a sitter

11. Get some exercise regularly

12. Give your child age-appropriate chores

Go Easy On Yourself, Parents!

Being a parent doesn't mean that your personal life has vanished. When you take the decision of becoming a parent it means you are adding one more life to yours! The phase of parenting is indeed hard and full of struggles but it's beautiful and magical also when you learn how to handle parental burnout.

From the stage one of holding your child's hand till the day or letting it go and fly is indeed a very beautiful journey. And in this journey you get to explore and know yourself better! You try to be a better person for you and your child.

But in this journey just go easy on yourself because it's your life too and there is no harm in being selfish in it but in a good and a healthy way.

Being a parent is not easy but it's not impossible also!