Single Parenting When Your Child Has Additional Needs

And for single parents, a really huge barrier for them asking for help is that they don't want to seem like they're a burden to others or they see it as a sign that they aren't coping.

Is this something that regularly comes up in your community and what strategies would you have to overcome this barrier that people may have?

Um, I mean, Lauren's just touched on it, the burden of, you know, telling someone about your day and then accusing you of looking for sympathy.

That's, that's, I think a lot of us might have that feeling and said, therefore not ask for help because if it's just telling you about the days seeking sympathy, then what's it going to be for asking for help? You feel like a burden.

Um, but.

We have to take care of ourselves.

I know I'm saying this, like, like I always do it perfectly myself.

I don't, but we have to take care of ourselves in order to take care of our children.

It's, um, you can't pull from an empty cup.

You can't water your plants if you've got an empty watering can.

So.

It is, you do need to ask for help, but I think what helps the most is finding community of people that get it.

So either that's people with lived experience or I'm lucky that some people in my inner circle either have lived experience themselves or they work in the field, so they get it more.

Yeah.

But I'd love like a Freaky Friday thing where somebody gets into my body for the day and all the time, every time they've said, have you tried X? Then they actually try it and see, oh, it doesn't work.

Telling the truth.

Maybe I should help.

But reaching out to communities, services and organisations, if you don't have people who can help you, there is a lot of stuff out there, but it's so hard to find.

It's all like in different places.

I do think there's a lot of stigma as well when it comes to trying to get help from services.

One, it's a battle, it's a fight.

And a lot of time with children who, you know, parents are trying to get respite care.

But again, it's that stigma when you say to them, well, have you tried contacting social services? Oh, no.

And with some parents, they have had that stigma.

that they've tried to contact social services to get some respite care but instead it's become a child protection issue even though there's no child protection involved really so there's a lot of stigma around trying to get the right help that you need and I still remember being part of a project a couple of years ago which was about disabled children and the social care for Black, Asian, minority ethnic groups and when they were trying to get help what they found was it was more of an accusatory setting they would end up in where it made them feel like they're just bad parents and they can't cope.