Self Care When You’re the Caregiver
We all have heard how important it is to be sure we are caring for ourselves as we care for our special needs child. Everyone says, “Don’t forget about you.”, but it’s extremely hard to do that. As a mom to a son that had a very challenging start in life, I heard that all the time, but I didn’t know how to do it because my son was so needy and he came first. So, if I could do it all over again, there are some things that I would have done differently. So here goes;
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Rest when he did. He was a very hyperactive child and very needy as he got quite frustrated when things didn’t go his way, so playing by himself rarely happened. I always tried to do things while he was napping because if I didn’t, then they wouldn’t get done. So, maybe 3 days a week, set a time for even 30 minutes to rest when he napped so that I could feel recharged when he awoke.
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Putting emotional boundaries around myself. I listened too much to what other people thought and their recommendations. As I look back, they had neuro-typical children and didn’t have the same challenges so listening to their advice proved to only feed into comparison mode which brought me down emotionally.
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Ask for help. That was extremely hard for me as I thought I was the only one who could meet Matthew’s needs and the truth be told, he needed a break from me too and would have been fine if I would have left him in someone else’s care for a bit.
These might seem like minor things, however, I believe every mom of a special needs child needs to hear this. You HAVE to take care of yourself because you are the one who knows your child the best and they need you to be at your best.
Until next week,
Mary
