Recharge Your Parental Batteries

Are you experiencing high levels of exhaustion, feelings of inadequacy, and emotional detachment from your children? According to studies by psychology researchers, parental burnout is a serious condition that requires attention. The good news is that it is curable!

- Kgomotso Moncho-Maripane

Do you battle to juggle your children’s busy schedules, homework demands and sleepless nights with your own frenetic life? If you are forever charging around from one appointment to another, it’s easy to see how you can end up chronically exhausted. And, science backs you up. A 2018 study by researchers at the Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium validated parental burnout as a condition just as serious as professional burnout. In fact, Psychology Today reports that around 8%–36% of parents are affected.

What’s more, counselling clinical psychologist Levandri Pillay (www. levandripillay.medeweb.co.za) says it is healthy to admit to the condition.

“What some parents don’t understand is that there is a big difference between feeling tired and not loving your children. Just because you feel tired and burnt out as a parent doesn’t make you a bad one or mean that you love them any less. It just makes you human,” Pillay says. The problem starts when you ignore, and don’t deal with how you feel.

THE EFFECTS

Parental burnout shares its common characteristics – emotional distancing, feelings of inadequacy and high levels of fatigue – with work-related burnout. Some parents experience both simultaneously.

The alarming revelations from the 2018 study (mentioned in the intro) are that this condition can lead to personal neglect, violence, and thoughts of escape. You find yourself in a horrific cycle where the burnout leads to neglect and further burnout.