Caregiver Burn Out and Asking for Help

Please note: None of this is a reflection of my son! Parenting is hard. It’s not him.  

Between coordinating doctors’ appointments, dealing with supplies for schools, thinking about specialists and the advocacy (essentially fighting) to get him the resources he needs, it all makes me tired. 

And the natural next step is to ask for help or to find ways to lighten the burden. 

What if asking for help is 10 times harder than just getting it done? What if getting help is not possible? 

For example, we are trying to get nursing care for my son, but in order to get there, we have to do so much. We also need to get some respite care but what's the point if we are worn out from trying to get respite care? 

There’s a lesson here. 

One thing we as parents need to do is push back when folks are making us do excessive things to get reasonable resources to better serve our kids. We should question these processes.

This isn’t just a parenting issue. This is a disability issue that folks with disabilities have been dealing with forever. The promise is that there is help out there, but in order to get it, you have to jump through a billion hoops only to have someone promise you things and then not deliver. 

“Help” means different things to the folks who need it and those who provide it, and the gap between the two often means the help is pointless. 

Burnout and parents’ frustration aren’t always the result of a lack of resources. They are often the result of the amount of work required to simply get help. Nevertheless, we press on! 

You can learn more about parent support on this website.