Tanya Valentin's Blog

The wayfinder’s guide for parents going off-grid from behaviourism, control, and inherited narratives

I have always enjoyed creating. Art, crafts, poetry and gardening have always been the way that I have enjoyed expressing myself and experiencing joy in the world.

The process is always the same, and if you’re an artist or a creative soul, you’ll understand this. We arrive at a project with an idea or even a plan of how it should look, how it should unfold, and then, somewhere along the way, the whole thing becomes a glorious, terrifying mess.

Photo by Daian Gan on Pexels.com

There’s that moment where you stare at what’s in front of you and think, “Oh no. This is not what I intended.“
But the real mastery lies in staying with it.
In letting the creation have its own life.
In surrendering to the co-creative process, with the creator, the muse, or the deeper knowing within you, and trusting that the mess is part of the making.

The Messy Art of Parenting

Parenting, especially parenting a neurodivergent child in burnout, is exactly like that.

We arrive with a blueprint handed to us by family, culture, schooling, psychology textbooks, and a long line of untold expectations and invisible rules.

We think we know how it is supposed to go…

However, as soon as we truly meet our child, their nervous system, their soul, their sensitivities, their limits, their wild and beautiful differences, everything we thought we knew can collapse into a pile on the floor.

And suddenly we’re standing in the mess, confused, disoriented, frustrated, and ‘shoulding’ ourselves, because this is not how it was supposed to go.

And in that moment, we are offered a choice:
Stay with the messiness of life as it is, nurture ourselves and our child through the discomfort of becoming…

Or retreat back to what we once knew.

Photo by James Wheeler on Pexels.com

It can feel as though there is no clear way forward.
But for those of us who stay, who breathe, who soften, who keep moving gently through the dark and winding path of the unknown, there comes a moment of realisation.

It was never the child who needed reshaping.
It was the narrative.
It was us.

The Unseen Forces That Make Parenting So Hard

Most modern parenting approaches, especially those still circulating in mainstream advice, were built on behaviourism, colonialism, and ableism.

Rewards, punishments, control, compliance, shaping behaviour, and extinguishing behaviour, not understanding the child, not connecting, not nervous system safety.

These “evidence-based” approaches were built on principles of behaviorism, a theory of learning that focuses on observable actions rather than non-observable mental states like feelings and thoughts and urges. Behaviorism privileges shaping behavior above understanding behavior. It sees behavior as the whole picture rather than an expression of underlying unmet needs. 

Becky Kennedy, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be

Parenting approaches that pull us further and further away from ourselves.

We’re taught to distrust our instincts and handed frameworks that convince us that if we just follow the steps, we’ll have control.

This legacy shapes everything:

The way we judge ourselves, “Am I being too soft?”The way others judge us, “You just need to be firmer”Even the way we interpret our child’s distress, “They’re manipulating you”.

This behaviourist inheritance is the air we breathe, even when we don’t consciously believe it.

Photo by Monstera Production on Pexels.com

And then there is the deeper layer: what Don Miguel Ruiz calls domestication.

The lifelong taming of the spirit, training humans undergo to disconnect from their instincts, disconnect from their needs, and obey external rules in order to be “good,” “acceptable,” or “worthy.”

We were domesticated.
We were taught to override our bodies.
We were trained to obey before we were ever taught to listen.
We were shaped into versions of ourselves that fit the system, even when that shaping broke us.

Domestication is so strong that at a certain point in our lives we no longer need anyone to domesticate us. We don’t need Mom or Dad, the school or the church to domesticate us. We are so well trained that we are our own domesticator.

Don Miguel Ruiz – The Four Agreements

So when we now try to parent differently, especially in ways that align with connection, intuition, and neuro-affirming care, we are not just learning a new skill.

We are deconstructing a worldview.
We are unlearning our own domestication.
We are healing while parenting.

This is why it feels like a mess.
Because it is.
But it’s the sacred kind, the kind that precedes creation.

Why Changing Parenting Approaches Feels So Threatening

When parents begin lowering demands, following their child’s cues, building safety, or stepping away from punishment-based models, something huge happens internally:

Your nervous system screams, “This is unsafe.”

Not because the new way is wrong. But because the old way was familiar.

Photo by Liza Summer on Pexels.com

Even though a growing body of neuroscience shows that parenting approaches centred on control and compliance do not support healthy brain development or long-term wellbeing, letting go of the framework we were raised to trust and the illusion of control it offered can feel terrifying.

Most of us grew up with the authoritarian → authoritative → permissive triangle.

We were told:

Authoritarian is too harshPermissive is too softAuthoritative is the holy grail

But this entire model was built through a behaviourist lens that prioritised control, compliance, and hierarchy. This parenting model positions the parent as the unquestioned authority and the child as a wild, unreliable being who must be shaped into something acceptable.

We tell parents they must be ‘consistent,‘ that if they give an inch, their child will take the whole hand. That meeting a child’s needs is “giving in,” and responding with softness is laziness.

And the most damaging message of all, that if we don’t hold the line with absolute firmness, our children will be ruined and will never become acceptable or productive members of society.

It is the language of taming and shaping, not the language of partnership or nervous system attunement.

We face an impossible and life-threatening choice: lose yourself or lose your belonging.

Parenting Culture Change

So when parents today choose something different, something more relational, responsive, and neuro-affirming, it’s a bit like moving to a foreign country and deciding to learn the language through immersion.

Everything feels backwards at first.
The words don’t fit in your mouth.
Your instincts don’t match your new environment.
People around you think you’re strange.
You doubt yourself daily.

This is not failure.
This is acculturation.
This is de-domestication.
This is remembering who you were before the world told you who to be.

The Hidden Source of Parent Burnout

A significant portion of parent burnout does not come from parenting itself, but from the constant conflicts around parenting.

Parents burn out from:

Defending their child to people who don’t understandNavigating systems built on compliance rather than connectionHolding boundaries with family members who undermine themBattling internalised shame about being “too soft” or “not strict enough”The cognitive load of unlearning generations of conditioningLiving in a world that gives parents responsibility but not supportTrying to parent gently in a culture built on domination

Studies on parental burnout (Mikolajczak et al., 2018–2023) show that lack of social support, societal judgment, and misalignment with dominant parenting norms are some of the strongest predictors of burnout, often stronger than the actual demands of caring for children.

For parents of neurodivergent children, the burnout is multiplied:

Constant advocacyBeing disbelievedNavigating inaccessible systemsManaging sensory and emotional environmentsCarrying the grief of watching your child sufferThe ongoing work of building a world that fits them when the existing one doesn’t

Parenting is hard.

But parenting against culture is exhausting.

And parenting while healing from your own domestication, your own childhood, is revolutionary work.

You Are Not Failing — You Are Rewriting a Lineage

To parent differently, to choose connection over control, nervous system safety over obedience, partnership instead of hierarchy, is to disrupt generations of conditioning.

It is stepping out of a long line of “taming the spirit” and choosing instead to meet your child as a sovereign being.

Photo by Ketut Subiyanto on Pexels.com

It is to refuse the domestication you once endured, not just for yourself, but for your lineage.

This work doesn’t look neat.
It doesn’t look polished.
It often feels like a mess.
Just like every great creative process does in the middle.

But something extraordinary happens when we stay.

When we stay through the discomfort.
When we stay through the doubt.
When we stay even when the people around us don’t understand.

We reshape the story.
Not just for our children, but for every parent who comes after us.

Parenting differently is not permissive.
It is courageous.
It is culture-shifting.
It is soul work.
It is liberation work.

You are the first in your lineage to step out of domestication and into conscious, connected parenting.

Of course, it feels messy.

All revolutions do.

It’s Not Just You…

If you’re here, reading this, you already know that changing your parenting approach isn’t just about learning new strategies. It’s about unlearning generations of conditioning…

…untangling behaviourism from your instincts,
…quieting the voices of judgment around you,
…and rebuilding the trust you were taught to abandon.

This kind of transformation doesn’t happen in isolation.
It can’t.

Because the hardest part of parenting differently isn’t the child, it’s the culture we’re pushing against.

It’s holding your ground when others misinterpret what you’re doing.
It’s staying steady when your nervous system is screaming for the familiar, even when the familiar never truly fit.
It’s learning a new language of connection while the world keeps trying to drag you back into the old one.

And this is why community matters so deeply.

A community reminds you that you’re not imagining things.
That you’re not failing.
That you’re not alone in the messy middle.
It holds you through the doubts, the grief, the wobbles, and the wins.
It gives you a place to belong while you’re building a new way of being.

This is what From Burnout to Balance was created for.

A space where parents unlearning domestication and behaviourism can breathe, be understood, share the load, and find companionship on a path that can feel lonely and misunderstood in the outside world.

A place to rebuild your confidence, reconnect with your intuition, and restore your nervous system, all while raising your child in a way that honours their sovereignty and your own.

If you’re longing for support that sees beneath the surface,
that understands the hidden layers,
and that walks beside you as you rewrite your family’s story…

You’ll be held here.

We’d love to welcome you.

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The Person Who Wrote This Blog

Hi, I’m Tanya Valentin, an AuDHD parent, family coach, author, and podcaster. I guide parents of Autistic and ADHD kids through burnout recovery using a neuro-affirming, trauma-informed approach.

As a parent of three autistic teens, I know firsthand how isolating and exhausting this journey can be. If this spoke to something inside you, you’re not alone. You can find more reflections and gentle community-based support inside From Burnout to Balance.

The post The Messy Middle of Rewriting the Parenting Story appeared first on Tanya Valentin.

What the Pikler Approach Teaches Us About Connection, Sovereignty, and Burnout Recovery

I began my career serving families as a teacher more than 25 years ago.
Like many teachers of that time, I was trained in the behaviourist approach, a model inspired more by dog training than by human development.

As a young teacher in my twenties, I didn’t think to question it. It fit neatly with how I had been raised and the worldview of the culture around me. Obedience equalled success; compliance meant respect.

But something in me always hesitated.
There were moments, the look of fear in a child’s eyes, the tightening in my own chest, that whispered this can’t be the way.

When I first encountered the work of Dr Emmi Pikler, something deep within me exhaled.
It wasn’t just a new teaching method or parenting philosophy; it was a way of being with another human soul. Her ideas spoke directly to the quiet dissonance I’d been carrying as both teacher and mother.

This experience illuminated everything my body had been trying to tell me: that care and connection are not tasks to be performed or tools to achieve outcomes. They are sacred invitations to slow down, to truly see, and to re-enter relationship with our own humanity.

This soon became more than a way of teaching or parenting. The respect demonstrated by this approach became the foundation of all my future relationships and underpins my entire coaching philosophy.

In this blog, I want to share how you can use these seven simple principles to support both you and your child through burnout recovery.

1. Full Attention — The Sacred Pause

Pikler teaches us to give full, undivided attention during caregiving. This is an opportunity to fill our children’s emotional tank.

In low-demand parenting, this becomes the art of the sacred pause, the moment we drop the to-do list and truly see our child.

Dr Pikler famously said:

“It is only when a child is emotionally satisfied that they will engage in authentic play”.

In burnout recovery, attention is medicine. It says, “You don’t have to perform to be worthy of my presence.”
And when we offer that to our children, we begin to learn how to offer it to ourselves, too.

Photo by Brett Sayles on Pexels.com2. Slow Down — Healing the Pace of Modern Life

Our nervous systems cannot heal at the speed of productivity. Many of our children in burnout are casualties of a world that has forgotten how to honour their natural rhythms and the ways of being they need to truly thrive.

Pikler invites slowness, not as indulgence, but as respect for our children and life’s natural rhythm.

Low-demand parenting echoes this: slowing down so our children can catch their breath and our own bodies can remember what safety feels like.

When we slow down, connection becomes possible again.

3. Care as Relationship

For Pikler, every nappy change, bath, or meal is an opportunity to build trust with the infants in her care.

In burnout recovery, small rituals of care become anchors. Every time we meet our child’s needs, we are reinforcing the message, “Your needs matter, you matter, you can trust me”
Tuning into the sacredness of these care moments reminds both parent and child that a relationship is not built in big moments, but in consistent, attuned ones.
When we soften our focus from outcomes to connection, we create conditions where healing can take root.

4. “With” — Not “To”

This is sovereignty in action – recognising the personal power and innate value of every person, whether they are an infant, a child, or an adult.
We move away from doing to or fixing for, and toward being with.
When our children are in burnout, our job isn’t to pull them back into the world before they’re ready; it’s to sit beside them in the stillness and trust their inner wisdom to lead.

This “withness” is radical; it decentralises the adult as authority and centres the child as a whole, and equal partner, worthy of equality and respect, even in their exhaustion.

Photo by Ivan Samkov on Pexels.com5. Readiness and Respect

Pikler taught never to put a baby into a position they cannot get into themselves. This principle is all about trusting the natural rhythms and readiness of the individual child, not an external milestone or checklist of where they should be.

What if we extended that to every stage of life?

Low-demand parenting honours readiness as sacred. We stop forcing development, socialisation, or recovery according to external timelines.
Instead, we trust the nervous system’s own pace, both theirs and ours.
That’s how sovereignty is nurtured: through trust, not pressure.

6. Uninterrupted Play — The Space of Integration

Play, in its purest form, is how humans make sense of life. For neurodivergent humans, special interests and time spent in flow state are important for overall well-being.

Play is an essential part of healing from burnout. When a child is in burnout, play might look quieter, slower, or more inward. Our role is not to direct it, but to protect it.

This principle also invites us, as parents, to rediscover our own form of play, the creative, soulful expression that reminds us we are more than caregivers; we are living, feeling beings.

7. Tuning In — Listening as an Act of Love

Pikler believed that even the youngest babies are always communicating. We only need to learn their language.

Our children arrive in this world deeply connected to their own sovereignty. It is we, often with the best of intentions, who teach them to tune out their inner wisdom and place their trust in voices outside themselves. And then, we spend much of our adult lives feeling adrift and disconnected, longing to find our way back home to that original, sacred connection with ourselves.

In low-demand parenting, listening becomes our compass.
We tune in to cues, bids for connection – verbal, sensory, emotional, instead of imposing expectations.
And over time, this deep listening rewires our relationship with our children and ourselves: we begin to hear our own inner voice again, the one we lost under years of noise, shame, and shoulds.

The Bigger Picture: Rehumanising Ourselves

The Pikler approach isn’t a technique. It’s a practice of remembering.

It reminds us that every human, child or adult deserves freedom of movement, freedom of expression, and the right to unfold in safety and love.

When we live these principles, we’re not just raising connected children, we’re repairing generations of disconnection.

We’re learning to mother ourselves with the same tenderness we offer our children.
And that, perhaps, is the deepest healing of all.

The Training Ground of Parenting

I was recently introduced to the idea of Earth School while reading Elizabeth Gilbert‘s book, All The Way To The River. The perspective that we come to this world as souls to learn something important really intrigued me. And I can’t help but think that some of us choose an especially challenging assignment: parenthood.

For me, parenting has been, and I suspect will always be, a lifelong training ground in humanness. Through my time as a parent, I’ve learned to navigate grief and loss, I’ve had several spiritual awakenings, and I’ve had to completely rewrite my understanding of behaviour, “good” parenting, neurodivergence, inclusion, sexuality, gender, and spirituality, just to name a few.

Parenting isn’t something we master and then stop learning. There’s no final exam, no point where we finally get it “right” and never make mistakes again. I don’t think there’s anyone who does this perfectly, and maybe that’s the whole point.

Relationships are some of the hardest work we’ll ever do as human beings. We’re all so different, constantly changing, and every day brings a new set of variables shaping our shared human experience. As our children grow and change, so do we. It’s the nature of relationship itself.

It often feels high-stakes, and I understand that deep pressure, that ache to get it right, because we’re shaping a human life. But sometimes we forget just how much wriggle room there really is. The purpose of relationship isn’t perfection; it’s to learn, to grow, to evolve with another person. Rupture and repair, over and over again, is part of the sacred rhythm of connection.

So if today you’re finding parenting hard, if you’re beating yourself up for getting it “wrong again,” fearing that this one interaction might somehow ruin your child forever, please remember: you are learning alongside your child.

Offer both of you a little more compassion today, for how beautifully you’re showing up to the lessons of this great Earth School.

If this speaks to something deep within you, know that this is the heart of what we explore together inside From Burnout to Balance, slowing down, rebuilding safety, and remembering how to live and parent from connection rather than control.

You don’t have to walk this path alone. Come, exhale, and find your breath again.

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The Person Who Wrote This Blog

Hi, I’m Tanya Valentin, an AuDHD parent, family coach, author, and podcaster. I guide parents of Autistic and ADHD kids through burnout recovery using a neuro-affirming, trauma-informed approach.

As a parent of three autistic teens, I know firsthand how isolating and exhausting this journey can be. If this spoke to something inside you, you’re not alone. You can find more reflections and gentle community-based support inside From Burnout to Balance.

The post Rehumanising Parenting appeared first on Tanya Valentin.

It’s been a bittersweet week for me.

My daughter, the one who started our family’s burnout journey, just finished her first year of university.

And you know what the very first thought was that crossed my mind?
“I’d better not tell anyone… what if it all goes wrong?”

Something tells me you might understand this if you are reading this.

The vulnerability of joy and hope, and that quiet, sinking feeling of waiting for the other shoe to drop.

And honestly, my feelings make sense.
All through her teenage years, she was the quiet one.
The child who just got on with it.
The one I thought was “fine.”

Until suddenly, she wasn’t.
Until the day when those words, “She seems to be doing so much better…” had barely left my lips before we were fighting to keep her alive.

So this milestone sits uneasily in my body.
And yet, in the same breath, I’m so proud of her.
Because I know what she had to overcome to get here.
A tug-of-war between fear and hope… between wanting to celebrate and wanting to stay safe has waged a war in me, and I am…

Well, you know…

This has reminded me of a poem I wrote during her first recovery, when she told us she wanted to go back to school:

Trust is built in the doing.
Little wonders woven from the textiles of our human interactions,
in the smallest of gestures —
trust offered, and trust returned.

To build trust, we must sit with the vulnerability of loss.
To know that not every gift of trust will be reciprocated —
and still, we offer it anyway.

For when trust is broken, the temptation is to guard our hearts,
to lock them away.
But the price of withholding trust is far too high.

Because without those regular, sustaining deposits of trust —
our hope, our faith, our love, and our humanity
begin to fade too.

I think this is what recovery, for our kids and for us, really asks of us.
To risk hope again.
To practice trust, not because it’s safe, but because it’s how we stay alive to the possibility of healing.

Learning to Listen to My Inner Voice

I am forever grateful to my younger self for doing the personal growth work before my child went into burnout.
For showing up, even when it wasn’t perfect.
For setting up morning rituals, sometimes faithfully, sometimes messily, that helped me come back to myself again and again.

In some ways, I was unmasking before I even knew that I was unmasking, and my realisation as a late diagnosed AuDHD dropped like a seed into already prepared ground.

Over the years, those small practices became anchors.
Recognising my thoughts.
Understanding my patterns and the patterns of those around me.
Taking time, even a few quiet minutes, to steady my nervous system before the day began.

It was by no means easy; it never is, but that foundation sustained me.
It protected my spirit, kept me from slipping into burnout myself, and allowed me to hold space for others walking through the same fire.

Neurodivergent Parenting and Trust

When we are in crisis, many of us rush to fix, to remove the pain and suffering from this moment, because the alternative feels too unbearable to endure.

For me, and for many of the parents I walk beside on this journey, the role of fixer becomes a kind of lifeline. The mantle of the overfunctioner shields us from the rawness of vulnerability, giving us the fortification we think we need for the task ahead.

This armour has a purpose.
It holds us upright when everything else is falling apart.
It protects us from the judgments, misunderstandings, and chaos swirling around us.

And in those moments, the strength it offers is functional, practical, often absolutely necessary, because there are others who depend on us to keep going.

But this armour is heavy.
Over time, it adds to our exhaustion, our weariness.
And if we’re not careful, it becomes a prison of our own making — convincing us that we are alone in our suffering.

Armoured up, we stay frozen in time, unable to process what has happened or to be truly present in what is. We begin to mistake the armour for safety, believing that vigilance equals protection.

But true safety lives in connection, and it’s impossible to be on guard and open-hearted at the same time.

The Sacred Relief of Surrender

Connection asks us to lay down our armour, to meet another human being in the present moment with soft eyes and an unguarded heart.

And yet, for so many of us on the parenting journey, life demands that we be both protected and open, strong and tender.

Sometimes, there is no way to hold both without something breaking.
And maybe the breaking isn’t the failure. Maybe it’s just what happens when a human heart carries too much for too long.

It’s only when we can surrender this heavy load to something greater than ourselves, or into the steady hands of others who have walked a similar path, that we taste the brief, sacred relief of being unguarded in community.

And maybe that momentary exhale,
that shared softening,
is what makes the impossible just a little more bearable.

But trust is hard to offer when you’ve known rejection, judgment, heartbreak, and the sting of handing your tender heart to others, only to have it broken again and again.

In those moments, the kind of surrender so often spoken about can feel almost life-threatening,
cementing the armour in place,
hardening what was once soft.

Rebuilding Faith in Something Bigger

And yet, I still believe we can’t make it through this, parenting a child in burnout, walking through the dismantling of everything we thought we knew, without nurturing a relationship with something bigger than ourselves.

This doesn’t mean we have to be happy all the time, or in acceptance, or even in love with that force, the divine, spirit, nature, life, whatever we call it.
We don’t have to be polite with it.
We’re allowed to be angry.
We’re allowed to argue, to question, to doubt.

The most important thing is that we stay in dialogue, that we open to this living current within and around us.
Because the more we speak with this voice inside, the more we listen to it, the stronger it becomes.
And with that strength comes clarity, resilience, and a kind of quiet knowing.

To me, this is what sovereignty really means:
learning to trust ourselves,
to reclaim the wisdom we once handed over to others,
and to remember that our guidance doesn’t come from the outside.

It lives within us.

We live in a world overflowing with knowledge,
but starving for wisdom.
Wisdom is born in the space where knowledge meets lived experience, and that space is in dangerously short supply.

One of the most frustrating things about wisdom is that, as Liz Gilbert reminds us, we do not get access to tomorrow’s wisdom today.

The Slow Work of Trust

Trust is built in the doing, not the knowing.

When I was the mum of an infant, I didn’t mind the sleepless nights.
The soft singing into the dark, the gentle rocking, the endless feeds.
Those moments were sacred in their own way, exhaustion wrapped in tenderness.

Even then, I could feel something growing in the stillness between us:
trust.

I felt it again years later, sitting beside my daughter in hospital, finding new ways to meet her needs, half asleep on an uncomfortable chair, watching over her as she slept.

We often talk about the overwhelm, the exhaustion, how consuming this experience is, and it is all of those things.
But it’s also an invitation.

When everything is stripped away, when we are taken again and again to our edge, we rediscover who each of us truly is.
Parent and child.
Human to human.
Soul to soul.

We don’t build it by sitting on the sidelines or waiting until we feel ready.
We build it in the mess, in the middle of the night, in the quiet exhale when we surrender the weight for just a moment and let ourselves be held by life, by love, by one another.

If this spoke to your heart, you’re not alone.
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The Person Who Wrote This Blog

Hi, I’m Tanya Valentin, an AuDHD parent, family coach, author, and podcaster. I guide parents of Autistic and ADHD kids through burnout recovery using a neuro-affirming, trauma-informed approach.

As a parent of three autistic teens, I know firsthand how isolating and exhausting this journey can be. If this spoke to something inside you, you’re not alone. You can find more reflections and gentle community-based support inside From Burnout to Balance.

The post Rebuilding Trust and Neurodivergent Parenting appeared first on Tanya Valentin.

A Collaboration Between Tanya Valentin and Laura Hellfeld

Has your neurodivergent child ever said things like, “I hate you,” “I hate myself,” “I wish you would die,” or “I want to die” during a meltdown?

Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com

Or perhaps they make unintelligible sounds, repeat the same words, cry, laugh, or say things that seem ‘inappropriate’ when they’re dysregulated?

These are examples of limbic utterances—automatic, instinctive, or emotional vocal expressions that occur when someone is experiencing extreme emotional dysregulation or overwhelm.

This type of communication is involuntary and reflexive, often emerging during moments of stress, sensory overload, or emotional distress. It can feel hurtful, shocking, or even terrifying to hear, but it’s usually not deliberate. Instead, these vocalisations bypass the rational, language-centred parts of the brain because the child or teen has entered survival mode.

Limbic utterances aren’t always words. They might include sighs, gasps, laughs, groans, cries, echolalia, or repeated phrases (also known as scripting). During intense dysregulation, your child or teen may use ‘rude’ or ‘inappropriate’ language or repeat alarming words and phrases, which can be deeply upsetting for parents to witness.

So, why do these utterances happen, and how can parents, caregivers, and professionals support neurodivergent children and teens during these moments?

Neuroception and Survival Responses

To fully understand what’s happening for our young people in these moments, we need to look beyond their behaviour and explore what’s occurring in their nervous system.

Behaviour is just the surface—like a ‘symptom’—of deeper processes happening inside.

According to Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal Theory (Polyvagal Institute), the brain is connected to the body and its major organs through the vagus nerve. Our neuroception—the brain’s ability to sense safety or danger—scans the environment approximately four times per second. This process collects information from the body and sends it to the brain via the vagus nerve.

When we feel safe, we operate in the Ventral Vagal state, where we feel calm, connected, and social. But when the body perceives a threat, it responds in one of three ways:

Hyperarousal (Sympathetic Nervous System): Fight or flight, which may look like meltdowns or running away (elopement).Immobilisation (Parasympathetic Dorsal Vagal): Freeze or shutdown.

Distress language often emerges when the body enters a hyperarousal state, specifically in the fight response.

What may appear as intentional rudeness is usually a reaction driven by anxiety and a sense of danger or feeling unsafe. These behaviours are typically influenced by areas of the brain like the limbic system, which governs instinctive and emotional responses, rather than the parts of the brain responsible for conscious, deliberate actions.

A Quick Look at the Limbic System or the ‘Emotional Nervous System’

What is the Limbic System?

The Limbic System refers to multiple brain structures deep in the brain that are interconnected to regulate a number of behaviours and emotions. It is one of the oldest structures in the brain and is partly responsible for instincts we have such as caring for our children, eating when hungry and drinking when thirsty. 

It is also a piece of our automatic responses to threats or stressors. It plays a central role in processing emotions, particularly fear, and initiating the body’s rapid responses to perceived danger. Here’s how the key structures of the limbic system contribute:

The 4 Main Structures of the Limbic System

Amygdala: Has a major role in emotional responses, especially of fear, anxiety, rage and happiness. It is crucial for detecting threats and triggering a fear response. When a threat is perceived, it rapidly evaluates sensory information and activates the hypothalamus to initiate the fight-or-flight response via the autonomic nervous system. The amygdala also communicates with other brain areas to create a heightened state of vigilance and emotional reactions.

Hypothalamus: The hypothalamus is often referred to as ‘the hub’ for activating the sympathetic nervous system, which leads to physiological changes like increased heart rate, rapid breathing, and pupil dilation which all prepare the body for action.

Hippocampus: This structure is involved by providing the context to the threat by bringing in memories and spatial information. It helps differentiate whether a situation is genuinely dangerous based on past experiences.

Thalamus: relays sensory information (besides smell) from the body to the brain to be interpreted and involved in alertness, modulates pain and helps us to decide what details we should pay attention to.

The Main Functions of the Limbic System

As you can see, the limbic system has a lot of responsibilities and is highly involved in managing our memories, emotions and keeping us motivated and stimulated. These responses are often automatic because they bypass higher-order processing in the cortex (outer part of the brain involved in logic, reasoning and problem solving) and create split-second reactions. 

Understanding the neurobiology and vulnerabilities of neurodivergent young people and their families

One of the biggest misconceptions about neurodivergent people is that they are unempathetic, uncaring and rude. 

These damaging and stereotypical perspectives stem from a history of misunderstanding neurodivergent people but also from a cultural and parenting worldview that is only now starting to understand the true drivers behind our outward behaviours. 

As our insights into how the brain and nervous system work we are developing more understanding into behaviours and why they happen. However, this is still in its infancy. We learned the majority of what we know about neuroscience in general in the last 30 years, and our understanding of how neurodivergent brains and nervous systems is much younger than that.

When working with neurodiverse families, it is important to take into account the many complex and nuanced layers of what it means to be a neurodivergent human being. 

Neurodivergent individuals often perceive and communicate in ways that are complex and unique. It’s crucial to recognise that what causes trauma for a neurodivergent person can differ significantly from what is considered traumatic for a neurotypical individual.

These unique traumatic experiences, combined with neurodivergent wiring, can condition the nervous system to view the world as inherently threatening. This heightened sensitivity to perceived danger contributes to the prevalence of mental health challenges.

In fact, anxiety and depression are some of the most common co-occurring conditions seen in Autistic, ADHD, and PDA individuals. Understanding these dynamics is essential to providing effective support.

How We Both See This Show Up in Our Work

Tanya Valentin, Neuro-Affirming Family Coach

Tanya is a family coach specialising in supporting parents of Autistic, ADHD, and AuDHD children and teens. She focuses on empowering families to collaborate in creating a lifestyle that honours their unique needs and values. Tanya is particularly passionate about guiding parents through the burnout recovery process, helping them understand their children’s challenges while fostering a compassionate, low-demand environment for healing and growth.

My work focuses on supporting parents as their children or teens navigate the recovery process from burnout. During burnout, children’s tolerance for even small demands can diminish drastically, leading to frequent meltdowns, outbursts, and distress signals.

In the acute stages of burnout, when distress is highest and capacity is lowest, non-verbal vocalizations such as crying, screaming, and moaning are common. These expressions signal an overwhelmed state and reflect the brain’s activation of the fight-or-flight response, where verbal communication becomes too challenging.

 It is also common for young people in burnout to say things like, “I hate you, go away!”, “I wish you would die!” or “I want to die!”. 

This can be distressing for any parent to hear. However, threats toward self or others often indicate desperation or an attempt to regain control in a situation where the child feels powerless. These behaviours are rarely about intent but rather a signal that the child is in significant distress. 

Both are signs of the nervous system being overwhelmed and energy reserves being depleted. They highlight a need for reducing demands, creating safety, and offering empathetic support.

Supporting a child in burnout who uses distress language requires prioritizing safety, empathy, and a calm environment. This includes safeguarding the space by removing potential hazards as well as minimizing sensory and emotional triggers.

 A low-demand, non-threatening home environment allows your child to express themselves without added stress. Distress language and non-verbal vocalisations often signal an overwhelmed state; responding with patience rather than pressure helps your child feel safe. 

Laura Hellfeld, Neurodivergent Nurse Consulting

Laura is an independent Nurse & Sleep Consultant whose work largely centres on supporting people with self-care and accepting internal demands. Self-care and internal demands like sleep, eating, hygiene and toileting.

When supporting parents and carers, it’s common for Laura to hear them share that their young people often respond to self-care tasks with examples like below…

‘UGH!’Deep sighs‘Gross, I hate this’Eye rolls‘Eff THIS!’Stomping‘What a waste of MY TIME!’Gives the middle fingerThrows something to the ground‘I hate you’ poking at food

It’s natural to feel frustrated or hurt when your young person responds to a meal you’ve prepared or a reminder about showering with these kinds of behaviour. After all, you’ve spent your time and energy trying to support them, and their reaction can feel personal. 

These moments can be challenging, but they often reflect your child’s needs, emotions, or sensory experiences rather than a rejection of your care. 

In particular, these behaviours may be examples of limbic utterances. These might be the unconscious, automatic responses to the pressure of accepting these self-care demands. It might be the young person’s way of feeling more in control of the situation.

Understanding this can help shift the focus from frustration to curiosity and compassion, creating opportunities for connection and problem-solving.

Connecting Limbic Utterances to My Own Experiences

I’ve spoken previously about my personal challenges with sleep and eating through the years and have found that one of my accommodations to accepting this self-care is acknowledging the frustration that bubbles up in me and needs to get out. For me, this frustration is now usually an automatic deep sigh with an internal dialogue of ‘ok, fine’. I, like so many young people, might just need to throw my head back and be like ‘Argh’ when I realize that I really could do with some fluids.

I’m coming to understand that I need to work alongside the automatic responses of my nervous system rather than trying to stop it.

What Can Help?

Validate and AcknowledgeRespond with empathy: “I can see this feels hard for you right now.” or “You’re right, this is pants.”Acknowledge their perspective without judgmentReassure them them that their feelings and reactions are validAdapt the EnvironmentModify the setting to reduce potential stressors and sensory demands (e.g., noise, bright lights)Offer tools for sensory regulation, like noise-cancelling headphones, fidget toys or weighted blanketsSimplify tasks or break them into smaller, manageable stepsSafeguard the environment and minimise the risk of a young person being able to seriously harm themselves (or others) during times of extreme stress

Create Time for Breaks, Downtime and Self-led Time

Breaks and downtime give the nervous system a chance to regulate and recover from overstimulation Unstructured time allows the brain to process emotions and experiences, reducing stress

Present Self-Care as Low-Demand Opportunities

Strew resources needed for self-care, versus directly stating to your young person to complete the taskIe. Place a cup with fluids next to them while they play a video game, rather than telling them to transfer out of the room to go find a drinkUse declarative language to provide information and context about the self-care task, versus using language that could be perceived as a demandIe. Statements like ‘I can turn the water on in the shower’ versus ‘go take a shower’ or ‘I’ve put your shoes next to the door as I see it’s 8.30 am’ versus ‘go put your shoes on.’

Reconsider Manners

These limbic utterances are a response to stress, not a lack of respect or manners. When stress takes over, their brain prioritises survival over social niceties. It’s a signal that they need support, not correction—so toss out the manners book for now and focus on helping them feel safe and understood.

Empowering Self-Awareness 

Begin guiding your young person to understand themselves over time. These limbic utterances may be part of how your young person responds to threat, stress or demands, and therefore having this explained to them is a life skill. With time, they may begin to recognise their own triggers and responses and better be able to collaborate on supports.

Create Opportunities for Your Own Self-Care

These might be mini or micro-moments like putting on a favourite song, drinking a warm tea or reaching out to a trusted friend with a text message

Thank you for learning about the community

To Follow Tanya’s Work

Webpage

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Parenting Neurodivergent Kids Together Podcast

To Follow Laura’s Work

Webpage

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Bluesky

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LinkedIn

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References

Brain-Body Parenting Book

Cleveland Clinic

Declarative Language Handbook

Stephen Porges

Science Daily

Low-Demand  Parenting Book

Beyond Behaviours Book

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For parents who don’t know where to beginYou’re Exhausted, Unsure, and Wondering

“Why isn’t my child recovering from burnout? What am I missing?”

If you’re here, you’ve probably already tried to lower demands, read the advice, maybe even fought your way through countless professional appointments—yet your child still seems stuck in burnout.

And underneath the worry for your child is something else: that quiet, guilty voice whispering “Maybe I’m failing them.”

You are not failing.
You’re missing a roadmap.

That’s exactly why I created the Burnout Recovery Starter Pack: to give you the clarity, compassion, and practical steps you need to begin.

What’s Inside

Three powerful mini-courses designed to work together:

Burnout 101
Understand what autistic burnout really is, what it’s not, and why the usual “fix it fast” approaches don’t work.Burnout Recovery Roadmap
A step-by-step framework to guide you from survival mode to creating conditions for healing.Why Is My Child’s Burnout Recovery Taking So Long?
Learn the hidden reasons recovery gets stuck and how to gently unblock progress.Photo by Ann H on Pexels.comWhy This Bundle?

Individually, each of these mini-courses offers important insight. But together, they form a pathway:

Foundations → finally understand burnout as a stress injury, not misbehaviour.Clarity → know what stage your child is in and what they need now.Troubleshooting → identify hidden barriers (pressure, environment, nervous system load) that keep families looping in burnout cycles.

This is about lifting the fog, replacing panic with perspective, and showing you that there is a way forward.

Parent-to-Parent Reflection: “I kept wondering why my child wasn’t recovering ‘fast enough.’ Understanding the hidden pressures I was placing on them changed everything. Recovery feels gentler now, for both of us.”

The Difference This Can Make

Imagine…

No longer second-guessing every choice.Understanding what your child needs, and what you need, without shame.Being able to explain burnout clearly to your partner, family, or even school, so you’re not alone in the advocacy.Watching your child slowly regain their spark because the pressure is finally off.

This isn’t about “fixing” your child.
It’s about creating safety and space for their nervous system to heal and reclaiming some peace for yourself in the process.

Why Parents Love This PackPractical + gentle: short modules you can complete in your own time (even while exhausted).Neuro-affirming: rooted in compassion, not compliance.Low demand: you don’t have to do everything at once—take what fits, leave the rest.Your Investment

Instead of piecing things together on your own—or waiting months for professionals who don’t understand burnout—this Starter Pack gives you everything you need to begin today.

Special Offer: $78 USD (Usually $99)

Instant access. Yours to revisit anytime.

If you’ve been standing at the edge of burnout recovery thinking, “I don’t even know where to start,” this bundle is for you.

Click below to begin your journey back to balance for both you and your child.

Buy the Burnout Recovery Starter Pack Now

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For parents overwhelmed by everyday meltdowns, shutdowns, and reactivityDoes this sound like you?You never know what will set off the next meltdown.Shutdowns leave your child unreachable—and you feeling helpless.You feel like you are “walking on eggshells”, which makes every day exhausting.You want to parent with compassion, but when the pressure is constant, you feel yourself snapping.

If this is your reality, you are not failing.
You simply don’t have the tools you need yet.

That’s why I created the Daily Struggles Toolkit, so you can move from chaos and guilt into calm, connection, and confidence.

Photo by RDNE Stock project on Pexels.comWhat’s Inside

Three mini-courses that work together to bring you relief and clarity:

Meltdowns & Shutdowns
Understand what’s really happening in your child’s brain and body, plus scripts for how to respond in the moment.Burnout Recovery Roadmap
A guide to see the bigger picture of recovery so you can reduce triggers, lower demands, and support your child’s healing.Hidden Barriers to Low-Demand Parenting
Discover the unseen expectations and pressures that keep you stuck—and learn how to shift them without guilt.Why This Bundle?

These struggles feel urgent because they happen every day.

This bundle is designed to:

Give you in-the-moment scripts so you’re not tongue-tied in crisis.Offer nervous system safety strategies for both you and your child.Help you see the long-term map of recovery so you don’t feel like every day is a setback.

Instead of drowning in reactivity, you’ll have a toolkit that helps you parent with calm, clarity, and compassion.

Parent-to-Parent Reflection: “I used to feel so guilty every time my child melted down, like I was doing something wrong. Now I know it’s part of burnout, and I have tools to respond with calm instead of shame.”

The Shift You’ll Notice

Here’s how life can feel different after using this bundle:

You stop taking meltdowns personally and know exactly how to respond.Shutdowns feel less scary because you understand the why—and have a plan.The constant reactivity at home eases because demands are lowered and needs are met.Instead of guilt and second-guessing, you feel more grounded and connected to your child.Why Parents Love ItPractical: real scripts, not theory.Gentle: no “fixing” your child—only safety and support.Low demand: short, self-paced modules you can fit in even when exhausted.Your Investment

Special Price: $78 USD (Usually $99)

Instant access. Yours to revisit whenever you need a reset.

You don’t have to keep living in daily crisis mode. With the right tools, you can shift from reactivity and overwhelm into calm and connection.

Get the Daily Struggles Toolkit Now

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For parents processing loss, identity shifts, and deep emotionsThe Grief No One Talks About in Parenting

When your child is in burnout, it’s not just their world that changes; it’s yours too.

You may find yourself grieving the life you thought you’d have, the parenting journey you imagined, or even the child you hoped the world would accept without conditions.

This grief isn’t wrong. It’s love with nowhere to go.
But it can feel heavy, isolating, and overwhelming.

And without tools to hold it, grief can turn into shame, guilt, or hopelessness.

That’s why I created the Grief & Renewal Pathway—to help you honour your grief, uncover hidden pressures that make it harder, and step into a gentler way of living alongside your child.

What’s Inside

Three soul-centred mini-courses designed to help you process, rebuild, and reconnect:

When Parenting Feels Like Grief
Explore the hidden layers of parenting grief, learn how to hold it with compassion, and find meaning in the loss.Hidden Barriers to Low-Demand Parenting
Identify the unseen expectations and cultural pressures that keep you stuck in guilt or resistance—and discover how to soften them.Burnout Recovery Roadmap
Rebuild with clarity: understand where you and your child are in the recovery journey, and how to create conditions for renewal.Why This Bundle?

Grief is not something to “fix.” It’s something to be witnessed, honoured, and carried with tenderness.

This bundle is designed to:

Help you name and hold the grief of parenting differently.Release the hidden cultural and personal expectations that compound your suffering.Guide you toward a gentler, more sustainable path forward through the burnout recovery process.

Parent-to-Parent Reflection: “I thought I was the only one grieving the parent I thought I’d be. These resources helped me name it, and suddenly, I wasn’t carrying it alone.”

The Shift You’ll Feel

With this pathway, you’ll move from:

Feeling ashamed of your grief → to seeing it as a sacred expression of love.Carrying hidden pressure and guilt → to recognising what can be released.Living in survival mode → to begin a renewal process grounded in clarity and compassion.

You’ll discover that grief, love, and hope can coexist—and that you are not broken for feeling the way you do.

Why Parents Love This PathwayValidating: finally puts words to what you’ve been carrying silently.Compassionate: no “get over it” or toxic positivity—just space to feel and heal.Practical + soulful: combines real-world tools with deep emotional support.Your Investment

Special Price: $78 USD (Usually $99)

Immediate access. Gentle, self-paced modules you can return to again and again whenever the waves of grief rise.

If you’ve ever thought, “I didn’t know parenting would feel like this”, you are not alone.

The Grief & Renewal Pathway offers you a place to hold your grief with compassion and step toward renewal, at your pace, with gentleness.

Get the Grief & Renewal Pathway Now

The post Grief & Renewal Pathway appeared first on Tanya Valentin.

For parents navigating school reintegration after burnoutYou Know Your Child Isn’t Ready for “Business as Usual”…

But the pressure is mounting.

Teachers want to know when your child will be “back to normal.”
Family members ask when they’ll return to school.
You lie awake at night worrying: “What if they never recover?”

The truth is—school reintegration after burnout isn’t about when your child goes back.
It’s about how they go back.

Without the right scaffolding, support, and pacing, kids are pushed into relapse, and parents are left with guilt, fear, and blame.

That’s why I created the School Readiness & Beyond Bundle, to help you navigate this transition with clarity, confidence, and compassion.

What’s Inside

Three mini-courses that work together to guide you step by step:

Reimagining Going Back to School
Practical tools and gentle frameworks for deciding if, when, and how your child might return to school—without pressure or shame.Why Is My Child’s Burnout Recovery Taking So Long?
Learn the hidden barriers (environmental, relational, systemic) that slow recovery, so you can advocate for your child effectively.Burnout Recovery Roadmap
A clear, compassionate map of the recovery journey, so you know where your child is and what supports matter most right now.Why This Bundle?

Because school reintegration is one of the most stressful crossroads for parents of neurodivergent kids in burnout.

This bundle:

Addresses readiness → helps you decide if your child is ready for school.Guides scaffolding → what supports to put in place so school doesn’t become another burnout trigger.Reduces pressure → helps you navigate outside expectations with confidence.Clarifies pacing → shows how to move forward without rushing recovery.

Instead of guessing—or feeling pushed—you’ll have a clear pathway to follow.

Parent-to-Parent Reflection: For the first time, I could walk into a school meeting without crumbling. Having a roadmap gave me the confidence to advocate for my child’s needs.

What Becomes Possible

With this bundle, you’ll move from:

Confusion and fear → to clarity about what’s realistic for your child.Pressure and guilt → to confidence in setting boundaries with schools and family.Constant setbacks → to slow, steady progress you can trust.Feeling alone → to knowing you’re not the only parent walking this path.

Imagine being able to face school meetings calm and grounded, knowing you have a roadmap—and your child having the space and support to recover fully.

Why Parents Love This BundleValidating: Finally puts words to your private fears about school and recovery.Practical: Gives you real strategies for scaffolding, pacing, and communication.Gentle: Centred on your child’s nervous system safety—not arbitrary timelines.Your Investment

🌱 Special Price: $78 USD (Usually $99)

Immediate access. Self-paced modules you can revisit whenever you need to reassess or prepare for the next step.

The School Readiness & Beyond Bundle helps you reimagine school on your child’s terms, with safety, compassion, and clarity.

Get the School Readiness & Beyond Bundle Now

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Your “all-in” toolkit for parenting through burnoutParenting in Burnout Feels Like Survival

Every day brings new challenges: meltdowns, shutdowns, school struggles, hidden grief, pressure from others, and your own exhaustion.

You’ve tried piecing together advice from books, therapists, social media—but it’s overwhelming, contradictory, and rarely built with neurodivergent families in mind.

What you really need is everything in one place: a compassionate, neuro-affirming resource hub you can turn to at 2 a.m. when you’re desperate for answers, or at 10 a.m. when another school meeting is looming.

That’s why I created the Complete Parent Survival Library, your all-in-one resource to help you not just survive, but begin to reclaim calm, clarity, and connection.

What’s Inside

Eight powerful mini-courses covering the full spectrum of burnout recovery and parenting challenges:

Burnout 101 → Understand what burnout really is, so you can stop blaming yourself or your child.Burnout Recovery Roadmap → A step-by-step guide to supporting recovery at your child’s pace.Why Is My Child’s Burnout Recovery Taking So Long? → Learn the hidden barriers that slow healing—and what to shift.Meltdowns & Shutdowns → Scripts, strategies, and nervous system tools for in-the-moment crises.Reimagining Going Back to School → Practical ways to scaffold school reintegration without pressure.Hidden Barriers to Low-Demand Parenting → Release expectations and guilt so you can parent with more ease.When Parenting Feels Like Grief → Tools for honouring loss, identity shifts, and deep emotions with compassion.Bonus: Understanding RSD (Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria)
Exclusive to this bundle — helps you recognise RSD in your child (and yourself), understand how it affects daily life, and learn practical strategies to reduce conflict and build connection.

Parent-to-Parent Reflection: I kept wondering why my child wasn’t recovering ‘fast enough.’ Understanding the hidden pressures I was placing on them changed everything. Recovery feels gentler now—for both of us.”

Why This Bundle?

Individually, these courses cover specific challenges. But together, they form a complete ecosystem of support:

Foundations → understand burnout and recovery.Everyday Struggles → meltdowns, shutdowns, RSD reactivity.Systemic Pressures → school reintegration, cultural expectations.Emotional Layers → grief, guilt, identity shifts.

And because Understanding RSD is only available here, this is the most comprehensive way to resource yourself and your family.

The Shift You’ll Feel

With the Complete Parent Survival Library, you’ll:

Stop spinning in confusion and finally understand what’s happening in burnout.Feel confident responding to meltdowns, shutdowns, and RSD without shame or panic.Advocate at school with clarity, knowing what scaffolding your child truly needs.Release hidden pressures and guilt that drain your energy.Hold your grief with compassion—and open space for renewal.Rebuild your parenting approach with calm, connection, and confidence.

Imagine being able to say: “I don’t have to figure this out alone anymore. I have everything I need at my fingertips.”

Parent-to Parent Reflection: These tools gave me permission to slow down. My nervous system feels safer, and that’s spilling over into how my child feels too.

Why Parents Love This LibraryComprehensive: the most complete set of burnout resources available.Practical: includes scripts, strategies, and reflection tools you can use right away.Gentle: self-paced, low-demand, designed to fit into your life as it is.Exclusive: the only place you’ll find my full course on RSD.Your Investment

🌱 Special Price: $197 USD (Usually $265 – Payment Plan Available)

Immediate access. Self-paced. Yours to revisit anytime you need support—whether in the middle of a meltdown or when you’re ready to reflect.

You don’t have to cobble together support from a hundred different places.

The Complete Parent Survival Library gives you everything you need to navigate burnout recovery, manage daily struggles, and nurture both yourself and your child—with compassion and clarity.

Get the Complete Parent Survival Library Now

The post The Complete Parent Survival Library appeared first on Tanya Valentin.

Why Parenting a Neurodivergent Child in Burnout Can Feel So Hopeless

I’m having one of those weeks where nothing I do seems to work, and my mind has turned into a relentless critic—loud, mean, and exhausting.

As this happens, hopelessness rolls in like a heavy black cloud. It presses down until all I want to do is curl up under the blankets and disappear for a while.

And then I remind myself…

I am not alone…

Parenting is hard for everyone!

Photo by Engin Akyurt on Pexels.com

For so many of us raising a neurodivergent child in burnout, nothing prepares us for the sheer emotional labour it demands.

It’s everything all at once—the constant meltdowns, the never-ending worry, the soul-deep exhaustion, the pressure that doesn’t ease, the judgment from others. And layered on top of that is the work no one sees: the reparenting of ourselves, the unlearning, the research, the endless questioning, and the quiet grief over choices we made in what now feels like another lifetime.

If you’re feeling this too, then welcome, my friend.

Let’s set it down together, even just for a few moments, and carry the weight side by side.

What’s Really Happening Beneath the Surface

According to Brené Brown

Despair is a sense of hopelessness about a person’s entire life and future. When extreme hopelessness seeps into all the corners of our lives and combines with extreme sadness, we feel despair…theologian Rob Bell defines despair as “the belief that tomorrow will be just like today.” We can’t figure a way out of or through the struggle and the suffering.

And that makes sense. When we have experienced significant traumas in our parenting journeys (like so many parents of neurodivergent kids do), we can reach a space where it feels like things will always be this way.

I am a firm believer that our emotions are always trying to serve us in some way. Our emotions are messengers there to give us information about our current internal state.

So what is our hopelessness trying to tell us?

It could be one or all of these things.

Reason One: Your Nervous System is Trying to Protect You

When you begin trying new ways of being, like lowering demands, parenting differently, or tending to your own burnout, you’re asking your nervous system to cross a bridge.

Photo by life._.kor on Pexels.com

On one side is the familiar land of old patterns: perhaps critical self-talk, high expectations, or parenting scripts handed down through culture and family. Even if those patterns weren’t serving you, they were known. They felt predictable, and therefore safe – the well-worn path.

Stepping onto the bridge into unfamiliar territory feels shaky and uncertain. Your nervous system may throw up resistance in the form of hopelessness.

Sometimes hopelessness acts like a shield: “If I stop hoping, maybe I won’t be disappointed.” It’s not proof that you’re failing—it’s your body’s attempt to protect you while you’re crossing into something new.

And there’s another layer: hopelessness can sound the alarm when you move away from the “good parent” narrative. Crossing that bridge means doing things differently, opening yourself up to misunderstanding and judgment, both from others and from the harsh inner critic inside. These fears can stir shame, guilt, and despair, making the bridge feel even more precarious.

But here’s the truth: the bridge is already beneath your feet, and step by step, you are building new ground on the other side.

How Safe Does Your Nervous System Feel About Parenting Differently? Take This Quiz To Find OutReason Two: You Are Exhausted

And then, underneath it all, there is the simple truth that you are exhausted.

Not just tired from a bad night’s sleep, but the bone-deep weariness that comes from living on high alert for too long.

Your nervous system has been running a marathon without rest, managing meltdowns, making endless micro-decisions, pressure from all directions, scanning for judgment, and carrying invisible grief.

Hopelessness isn’t just resistance; sometimes it’s the cry of a body and mind that are utterly spent. When exhaustion takes hold, it can paint everything in shades of despair, making it harder to see progress, harder to believe change is possible.

Exhaustion, as heavy as it feels, can also be a messenger. It’s your body’s way of saying: “I cannot keep sprinting; I need to rest.”

Photo by RDNE Stock project on Pexels.com

Instead of seeing this weariness as weakness, you can view it as an invitation, a call to slow down, soften, and allow yourself the same compassion you would give your child.

Rest and gentleness aren’t indulgences; they are the fertile ground where healing and breakthroughs take root. Sometimes the most courageous thing you can do is to stop, breathe, and let yourself be held by the moment.

Reason Three: Growing Pains

One thing that surprised me was the amount of work I would have to do on myself as a parent. It’s deep transformational work.

Many people who are deep into healing and transformation find themselves standing in a liminal space: the in-between where the old ways no longer hold, and the new ways haven’t yet taken root. It can feel like the caterpillar that has entered the chrysalis and turned to goo. This feeling of being ‘in between’ is incredibly uncomfortable.

Hopelessness can be a significant symptom or component of prolonged grief. There is grief in loosening our grip on old ways of being, the habits, beliefs, and even relationships that once held those patterns in place. The internal work of walking the winding path through burnout can feel unbearably heavy at times.

Francis Weller captures this truth so beautifully when he reminds us:

Grief is a threshold emotion. When we step across that threshold and enter the room of grief, it has a way of opening up the rest of our life.

Though he speaks of grief, the image applies beautifully to burnout recovery—hopelessness, collapse, and disorientation are like being on that threshold, which paradoxically opens toward emergence.

In burnout recovery, this is sometimes the moment when clarity starts breaking through, but only after we’ve allowed ourselves to truly see and accept that the old way isn’t working.

Important: If you suspect that you may be experiencing depression or you are struggling with your mental health, please seek the support of a medical professional.

What Helps Parents Move From Hopeless to Hopeful

Hopelessness does not mean that you are failing as a parent. Like any emotion, it won’t last forever.

Sometimes it’s a sign you’re close to letting go of what was never yours to carry, the unrealistic demands, the shame, the scripts of “what a good parent should do.” The surrender of these things can be the soil where breakthrough begins.

Feeling hopeless doesn’t guarantee a breakthrough is coming tomorrow, but it does mean that you could be brushing against the edges of what needs to change.

If you can find a way stay with yourself in compassion and curiosity here, and with support from a community, coach or therapist, you’re much more likely to find that this can be the doorway to something new.

Photo by Ricky Esquivel on Pexels.comGetting Support as a Parent of a Neurodivergent Child

It’s not your fault if this feels hard. Your nervous system is simply trying to protect you because you are doing something incredibly brave that you haven’t experienced before.

One thing I’ve learned, both through my own parenting journey and in walking alongside hundreds of other parents, is this: we can only adapt our parenting to the level that our nervous system feels safe with.

How Safe Does Your Nervous System Feel With Changing How You Parent? Take the quiz to find out

This is why parenting change is so much easier when it happens in a community that understands you.

Co-regulation, shared experiences, and being witnessed in your struggles help your brain and body feel safer. In a community, you don’t just carry the weight alone; you borrow nervous system safety from others. This allows you to make changes with more ease, stay consistent, and feel more confident in your parenting decisions.

That’s what we do inside, From Burnout to Balance, a parent support system for parents navigating the terrain of burnout recovery alongside their children.

By joining this community, you are stepping into a movement built on:

Nervous system safety — because calm parents create safe homes.Low-demand parenting — because compassion opens more doors than control.Repair and reconnection — because ruptures are inevitable, but healing is always possible.Grief as sacred — because loss and love are forever intertwined.Community-centred support — because no parent should walk this path alone.Reparenting ourselves — because our healing ripples outward.Practical, soul-deep resources — because both the head and the heart need care.

This isn’t about “fixing” your child. It’s about freeing your whole family.

If you have been craving the steady support that only a community can give you, I invite you to join us in From Burnout to Balance.

Start your 7-day free trial The Person Who Wrote This Blog

Hi, I’m Tanya Valentin, an AuDHD parent, family coach, author, and podcaster. I guide parents of Autistic and ADHD kids through burnout recovery using a neuro-affirming, trauma-informed approach.

As a parent of three autistic teens, I know firsthand how isolating and exhausting this journey can be. That’s why I created From Burnout to Balance, a space where parents can find real, practical answers to help their child recover from burnout and a supportive community, so no parent has to navigate it alone.

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