Parenting with Mental Illness – Mom and Children

Parenting alone, I heard, can be very hard. I wouldn’t know since I am a parent with mental illness, and I can tell you that it is not an easy task. Half the time, I have to check myself while parenting. You’re probably not wondering what I mean by that if you’re following my blog, but I will not make an a** out of myself by assuming. I will explain what I mean, so just humor me if you do know, and if you don’t, then I am proud of myself, lol.

I can be in the middle of correcting my child or children depending on what is going on for what they did when I suddenly realize I am parenting while I’m triggered. This is not acceptable in my book, especially since two out of three of my children have autism with mental illness. I do not want to harm their mental health or cause them any more harm than what has already been generated.

Now I find myself in a jam. Do I continue to parent in my state and repair the damage later? But keeping in mind that this route can take a long time, it is not a complete proof plan. It may not work, and I may cause more damage than necessary, so this isn’t always an option that I even bother to consider since I don’t want to be that woman the one I grew up with.

I have to remind myself that their mental health and their autism play a big part in why I need to parent them at the moment. It would not be the wisest decision to continue parenting under this state where I can cause more damage than good. It is essential to realize that if the damage outways the good, then abort the mission so that you can regroup.

It is essential that the person who shows up to parent is the parent, not the triggered version or the stressed-out version. We need to remember what it felt like to have our parents rip our heads off, and we never understood what we did; heck, we probably still don’t to this day. Maybe some of us are still healing from the trauma it has caused us. Do we want our children to become us ten or twenty years from now? Finding themselves asking themself the same questions we ask ourselves today.

Even better, resenting us for the trauma we caused them all because we didn’t show up for that parenting moment but instead, the triggered/stressed/frustrated parent showed up. Making that parent session one to never forget for all the wrong reasons.

Let us shoot for success and beat the need to repair any damages to our children by not showing up as anyone else. Let us show up as ourselves as best as we can after we center ourselves regroup for a second to get the message across in a safe, non-damaging way. We will all have a better experience and a closer bond down the line.