If you have ever felt completely exhausted by parenting, you have probably heard the usual advice: get more sleep, take some time for yourself, practice self-care and make sure you are not putting everyone else’s needs ahead of your own.
Of course, those things can help. But they are not always realistic when you are already stretched thin.
If you have young children, a child with additional needs, a demanding job or simply a household that seems to need something from you every five minutes, finding another hour for yourself can feel like one more thing you are failing to accomplish.
The good news is that research into parental burnout points to something more useful than simply doing more self-care. Certain resources and coping skills can actually make you more resilient when parenting gets difficult.
And unlike the vague advice to “take better care of yourself,” these are things you can gradually build into your everyday life.
Why You May Handle Stress Differently From Another Parent
Two parents can have equally exhausting days and walk away feeling completely different.
That is because burnout is not caused by stress alone. It tends to happen when the demands placed on you consistently outweigh the resources you have available to deal with them.
This becomes especially clear when you are parenting a child with special needs or a disability. Research involving mothers in this situation found that they experienced higher levels of parental burnout and caregiver burden, particularly when their child’s disability was more severe. At the same time, mothers who reported having more social support also showed higher levels of “learned resourcefulness,” a psychological capacity that can help you cope with difficult circumstances.
In other words, having people in your corner can actually change how well you are able to handle a heavy load.
That support does not necessarily have to mean having a huge group of friends or family members available around the clock. It could be a partner who takes over bedtime, a friend who lets you vent without offering unsolicited advice, another parent who understands what you are dealing with or someone who can occasionally help with practical things.
For some families, the demands are even more complicated. If your child experienced an injury during birth that resulted in ongoing medical or developmental needs, you may be dealing with appointments, additional expenses and difficult questions about what happened on top of your everyday parenting responsibilities. In that situation, getting help from child and birth injury lawyers may help you address some of the legal and financial questions rather than carrying that uncertainty on your own.
Research has found that a combination of risk factors and protective resources explained a substantial portion of the differences in parental burnout. That is an important distinction. Your burnout risk is not determined only by how difficult your life is. It is also affected by what resources you have available to help you handle it.
How You Look at a Difficult Situation Can Make a Difference
This does not mean you need to become relentlessly positive.
If your child is struggling, you are exhausted or your family is dealing with a genuinely difficult situation, being told to “look on the bright side” is probably not going to make you feel better.
But there is a difference between pretending that something is not difficult and changing the way you approach it.
Researchers studying parental burnout during pandemic lockdowns found that the way parents perceived difficult situations was associated with how much burnout they experienced, even when the circumstances themselves were taken into account.
This is known as cognitive reappraisal, and it essentially means changing the way you interpret a stressful situation.
For example, you might find yourself thinking, “I cannot handle another thing today.”
That may be completely understandable. But you could try narrowing your focus to something more manageable: “Today is overwhelming, but I only need to figure out dinner and bedtime.”
The circumstances have not changed. You still have the same responsibilities. But you have changed the way you are processing them.
That may sound like a small difference, but it is a skill you can practice. You do not have to naturally be an optimistic person for cognitive reappraisal to become part of the way you handle stressful parenting moments.
Being Kinder to Yourself Actually Matters
There is another habit that can make a difference when you are already running on empty: how you talk to yourself.
Think about what happens after you lose your patience with your child. Maybe you raise your voice, handle a situation differently than you wanted to or simply have a moment when you feel completely overwhelmed.
It is easy to immediately start criticizing yourself.
“I’m a terrible mom.”
“I should be able to handle this.”
“Why can’t I get my act together?”
If those thoughts sound familiar, you are certainly not alone. But research suggests that self-compassion may be an important protective factor against parental burnout.
Self-compassion does not mean letting yourself off the hook. It means giving yourself the same understanding you would probably give another parent who was having a terrible day.
You can acknowledge that you handled something poorly without deciding that you are a terrible parent because of it.
You can be disappointed in yourself without spending the rest of the day mentally beating yourself up.
According to experts, mindfulness and self-compassion are associated with lower levels of burnout, with self-compassion helping to explain part of the relationship between mindfulness and reduced burnout.
So the next time you make a parenting mistake, try changing the conversation in your head.
Instead of, “I completely screwed that up,” try, “That did not go the way I wanted. I’ll try something different next time.”
It is a small change, but it is much more useful than spending the rest of the evening feeling guilty.
What This Can Actually Look Like in Your Life
None of this means you need to add another complicated routine to your already-full schedule. In fact, the most useful changes can be surprisingly small.
Make it easier to accept help. If someone offers to pick up your child, bring dinner or take something off your plate, you do not have to prove that you can manage without them. Accepting practical help gives you more resources to work with.
Pay attention to the way you interpret stressful moments. You do not have to convince yourself that everything is fine. Instead, try asking yourself what part of the situation you can actually manage right now.
Notice your inner critic. When you catch yourself thinking that you are failing as a parent, stop and consider what you would say to a friend in the same situation. You would probably be considerably more understanding.
Be specific when you are overwhelmed. There is a big difference between thinking, “Everything is a disaster,” and identifying the actual problem: “I have three appointments this week and no one to watch the kids.” The second version gives you something specific to solve.
Research on rumination suggests that this distinction matters. Getting stuck in broad, repetitive thoughts about everything that is going wrong can be more harmful than thinking concretely about a specific problem and what you can do about it.
What This Means for You Right Now
Protecting yourself from parental burnout is not necessarily about finding more time for bubble baths, exercise or other traditional self-care activities. Those things can be helpful, but they do not address every reason you may be feeling overwhelmed.
Sometimes what you really need is more support.
Sometimes you need to change the way you are interpreting a difficult situation.
And sometimes you need to stop treating every parenting mistake as evidence that you are doing a terrible job.
You cannot always reduce the demands on your family. There will still be sick days, sleepless nights, appointments, school problems, work deadlines and days when everyone seems to need you at the same time.
But you can work on building the resources you have available to handle those demands.
Having people you can rely on, learning to reframe stressful situations and practicing self-compassion can all help change how much those demands take out of you over time.
Parenting is hard. You do not need to make it harder by believing that you are supposed to handle all of it perfectly, all of the time.