Are you steering the ship?

Appointments, meetings, routines, nutrition, education. These are just a few of the things that you need to manage as a caregiver and that's on top of your regular 'parent duties'. When you get to these meetings and appointments, who is asking the questions and giving the instructions? If you are like me then at least initially you let the professionals run the meeting or appointment. After all, you went to them for help, so why shouldn't they tell you what to do, right?

Initially it might even calm some of the overwhelm that you are feeling because when you have a child with a new diagnosis (or even a new diagnosis yourself) there is a lot of uncertainty and it is helpful to be given some concrete instruction as to what you can do to move forward. After a while though, you start to become overwhelmed with all of the instructions, especially if some of them are difficult to manage or don't fit with the priorities of you family. You start working your tail off to comply with all of these instructions and you start to become exhausted, overwhelmed and all consumed. The benefits might not even be what you were hoping for in the first place. You are on their agenda and not your own.

It's not their fault because that is how we have always done things, we have gone to the professionals and followed their instructions without question. Although some people now go in the complete opposite direction and counter or dismiss everything they say. What we all need is to be the leader of our wellness team and create the most collaborative, helpful team that we can to benefit ourselves or out child.

We can take a leadership role by being the point of contact for all professionals, assimilating the information, asking the right questions. There is one key feature of leadership that is most important to take into consideration first and that is to know where you are going. A leader is someone who can get everyone on the same page and working towards the same goals. You're first task as the leader of yourself and your family is to get clear on your values and your priorities. For some of you that might be academic achievement and for others it might be social/emotional goals. You may choose that your priority is nutrition or medications or behaviour change. No matter what your priority is, you need to know it and get everyone else on board with you. Only once you are working towards your values and ideals will your stress levels start to reduce and you can make decisions that will move you forward towards your goals.

This is a process that takes time and will be more or less challenging based on how willing your team members are on collaborating with you. Using a positive, value driven approach will help wonders in getting to where you want to go.

Take control of your life and the wellbeing of your family by taking the leadership role. Even though you may think you don't have time for this, I'm going to suggest that you don't have time or energy not to take this approach.