Parents of children with disabilities – Your wellbeing

Parenting a child with disabilities can be both deeply rewarding and uniquely challenging. The journey requires extraordinary patience, love, and support. While every family's experience is different, there are helpful strategies to manage daily responsibilities and maintain your wellbeing. Here are a few: 

Planning and task-sharing: 

  • Create weekly plans that outline appointments, paperwork, and shared responsibilities. 
  • Use a family calendar to track important dates and divide tasks among family members. 
  • Remain flexible, understanding that unexpected changes are part of the journey.  

Self-care:   

  • Listen to your body and pay attention to cues that you might be tired, hungry, or stressed. Try to eat and sleep regularly and go for regular health checks. 
  • Practice self-care and find moments of personal joy, whether through brief exercise, reading, or connecting with friends. 

Use your support network:  

  • Ask for help from your family, trusted family members and friends, they might be able to support you and your child by completing tasks around or outside your home, spending time with your child or helping you cope when you feel stressed or overwhelmed. 
  • Seek support from a mental health specialist. Many studies prove that this is a great way to prevent and address depression and increase your emotional capacity to deal with big challenges and responsibilities.    

Create a support network: 

  • Semi-formal networks like family and parent associations provide peer support for families with children with disabilities. These groups may help you to connect to the right services much faster, support your mental health and will be a part of your support system.   
  • Look for local community organizations, charities, or groups that provide services for children with disabilities. They will be a good resource for learning about available services for you and your child and connecting with positive role models. 

Additional types of support: 

  • You may be able to receive support through health care services, home visiting services, community-based social services, early childhood intervention services, parental support groups that might be organized by local NGOs or service providers, preschool or kindergarten. 
  • Inquire about respite care. In some countries respite services are available to allow parents and children with greater support needs to have separate time for part of a day, overnight, or several days. It can be done at your home or out of the house. Seeking respite care might allow you to have alone time by yourself, with your partner, or with your other children.