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Advocacy burnout occurs when your child’s needs begin to put strain on your emotional and mental resources.

Be mindful of advocacy burnout signs and any gradual changes in your behavior, like feelings of overwhelm.

Scheduling advocacy time blocks is a good way to ensure that advocacy tasks don’t consume you every day.

It’s OK to ask for help, leave something for another day, or say, “I can’t handle that right now.”

As the school year approaches, most parents have back-to-school shopping on their mind, helping children pick out new clothes, shoes, and backpack essentials. However, for parents of a neurodivergent child, things look, well, a bit different. Cue the list of meetings and updates you need to coordinate across teachers, therapists, and other providers to share news about your child’s progress, ongoing needs, and recent milestones and/or challenges. For any parent in this situation, this likely sounds all too familiar, and I’ll bet that at some point, you’ve already dealt with advocacy burnout.

Advocacy burnout is very real and occurs when the ongoing demands of supporting, monitoring, and seemingly fighting for your child’s needs begin to put strain........

© Psychology Today