Want to Reduce Stress as a Parent to a Neurodivergent Child? Here's How

As a parent with a neurodivergent child you'll experience stressful moments throughout your day. This means that you'll regularly be moving into fight or flight mode, which over time impacts your mental health and overall wellbeing.

Growing up in a neurodiverse household I know first hand how much stress you can face when fighting for your child's needs, and supporting them in daily life. I have two younger sisters who are neurodivergent and the different situations and triggers that can cause stress.

Knowing how to manage stress, as a parent carer, can feel overwhelming knowing where to start. This blog post shares five ways you can reduce stress and prevent experiencing burnout.

Self-Care for Parents with a Neurodivergent Child

Deep Breathing

This is one of my top wellbeing tips for parent carers. It is a quick, yet effective way to slow down a stressed mind.

You might notice when you’re stressed that your breathing feels shorter and certain areas of your body feel tense. Your shoulders could feel tight and close to your ears or your forehead might be tense, you may even suffer from headaches or migraines.

Deep breathing is a powerful way to bring self-care into your busy schedule. At any moment, you can make a conscious effort to pause what you're doing, take a slow deep inhale through your nose, then a long exhale through your nose or mouth. Repeat this twice more.

This helps shift your mind, and body, from being stressed to a more relaxed mental state.

As a parent, I find this practice helps me feel more grounded when things feel challenging or overstimulating. This is one of many emotional regulation techniques that you can share with neurodivergent children. Try it together, for the first few times, when everyone is feeling calm. Then try using it as a tool during stressful and/or dysregulated moments.

Daily Routines

You'll have routines that you move through during your day, many of which you'll do on auto-pilot.

When you're a parent in a neurodiverse family you’ll not only have your own routines but your child(ren)’s. This might be very structured or in a specific order, depending on your child(ren) and their needs.

You can start to become more present during you and your child's routine when you bring your full focus to the activity. This can be done at any time in the day.

A mundane activity that you could try being mindful of is brushing your teeth. Bring your awareness to the full process of brushing you and/or your child's teeth. Starting with bringing the toothbrush and toothpaste out all the way to rinsing and putting your toothbrush away.

It’s normal for your mind to wander and you might want to rush through the process. When you notice that your mind has started thinking about the next part of the routine, see if you can simply observe them without being critical towards yourself or your thoughts. Then return your focus back to the process of brushing your teeth.

By taking a few minutes to become mindful of your actions you can start slowing down your thoughts and reduce any feelings of stress.

Mindful Conversations

You might find yourself having repeated conversations either with professionals when speaking about meeting your child's needs, or when speaking to your child. This could especially be the case if you have an Autistic child with special interests.

It can feel tiring repeating yourself when fighting for your child's needs, and you could feel unheard as a parent to a neurodivergent child. A way to help manage stress that arises before, during, or after important meetings is by bringing your focus to the present moment.

If you spend too much time ruminating about the past you can get caught in a loop of unhelpful thoughts. These thoughts can impact your outlook on your current situation. Similarly, when you have thoughts whirling in your head about what might, or might not, happen you can start feeling overwhelmed.

During conversations, when you notice your mind beginning to think about a past or future experience, or potential experience, see if you can notice the thought and not become critical of it. Instead, acknowledge that the thought, or emotion, is there and let it go before bringing your focus back to the conversation.

This will be an ongoing practice that you will need to keep returning to. However, when you have it in your mind you will be more likely to remember the next time. Over time you can start to reduce feeling stressed and/or worried.

Nature

Going outside and being around nature can help reduce stress and make you feel more relaxed. You can become aware of your senses and try mindfulness in nature.

You don't necessarily need to turn this into a big outing, unless you want to take a day trip to you and your family's favourite nature spot. Simply going somewhere that has trees or flowers can help bring a feeling of calm. This could be in a garden, a park or a path off a main road in a city.

If you would like to connect with nature but aren't able to, for any reason, you can watch videos or listen to audios with nature visuals/sounds.

One way to support your mental health as a parent carer is by practicing a grounding technique. My favourite wellbeing tip for managing stressful and anxious thoughts is the 54321 technique. This involves bringing your awareness to:

• 5 things you can see

• 4 things you can touch

• 3 things you can hear

• 2 things you can smell

• 1 thing you can taste

You can use this technique at any time when you're outside, or indoors, to help manage stress and practice a few minutes of self-care.

Releasing Comparison

There will be times when you compare your life to people you know and/or strangers. This can be online and in real life interactions.

As a parent in a neurodiverse household there will be different challenges that you face compared to a non-neurodiverse family. This could be relating to the types of food your child eats, which could be very limited, or the type of activities you are able to participate in, due to potential sensory overload and becoming dysregulated.

There will be times when you may wish that you could be in someone else's shoes or that certain things were different. However, if you regularly have these thoughts you can start feeling like you aren't “doing enough” or other unhelpful thoughts.

When you become aware of when feelings of comparison arise you can start to treat yourself with kindness, instead of listening to your inner critic.

One way to turn an unhelpful thought into a more compassionate thought is by creating a positive encouraging statement, or affirmation. When you notice yourself comparing yourself to others, you can tell yourself, mentally or aloud, “I am enough”, “It's ok to want to make a change, I can take small meaningful actions to make a positive difference”, or another positive phrase.

This practice can help you manage stress and approach your thoughts with kindness rather than judgement.

Managing Stress as a Parent with a Neurodivergent Child: Next Steps

Looking after your mental health and wellbeing as a parent carer doesn't need to be time consuming.

You can start bringing small mindful moments into your daily routine to help you feel calmer and reduce stress.

If you're ready to explore more ways to prioritise your wellbeing as a parent in a neurodiverse family.

You can start the new year by slowing down and connecting with yourself and your family in my 31 Days of Everyday Mindfulness offer, starting on 1st January 2025.

Find out more details and sign up for only £31 here. The price will be increasing on the 21st December!

If you come across this post after January, you'll find more ways to manage stress and look after your wellbeing in my self-paced course ‘The Mindful Reconnect for ASN Parents’ here.