Welcome to Autism Blueprint Quick Tips; A mini episode where I share a quick nugget of knowledge to help you on your autism journey.

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Today’s Topic: Maintaining Your Sanity As An Autism Parent During Quarantine

• How to regulate your body to combat stress.
• Managing your expectations and guilt.
• How to let go of perfectionism.
• Reminders that this time is a learning curve for all of us.

Mentioned on the podcast:

Article: Advice On Raising Kids During Coronavirus: Be The World’s Okayest Mom

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Transcript of the Episode

Maintaining Your Sanity As An Autism Parent During Quarantine

During this unprecedented time, parents need guidance. But for autism parents, this quarantine stuff is particularly stressful due to our kids’ extenuating needs. Their desire for routine and structure, resistance to change, sensory needs, and for many- inability to adequately express their needs can make for some very challenging days. So there are some words of wisdom I’ve gathered both from my own experience over the past few weeks, in working with my clients and also from other mental health professionals. And today I want to share them with you. While most of my episodes focus on parents and professionals, today I want to just speak to the parents and offer what I hope will be a small lifeline.

Expectations and guilt

The very first thing I want to make sure you’re doing, is to lower your expectations of yourself. If you spend any time on social media you may be seeing that many your friends are taking up are hobbies at home, cleaning out closets, redecorating their homes, or writing the great american novel. You get the picture. But for our families, its usually all hand on deck- and it’s difficult if not impossible to get done what we need to let alone take on a new project. So I want you to be aware that you may be silently putting some pressure on yourself and then feeling guilty for not being able to keep up. Let that go! How? By first becoming aware of it, and then deciding it’s not serving you. From a purely logical point of view, you really don’t have time to stress about anything else right now. That being said, if you’re anything like me, sometimes a good closet cleaning helps manage your anxiety. If that’s the case, make some time to do it and enjoy it. But because we have so many have to’s, if you don’t want to, that’s totally okay.

Be the “okayest’ parent

Perfectionism is rampant in our society. And there’s just no room for it in a n autism household, especially now. I read an article the other day called Advice during the coronavirus; be the worlds okayest mom. https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/advice-on-raising-kids-during-coronavirus-worlds-okayest-mom-163152537.html?soc_src=yahooapp

It really helped me put life into perspective right now and allowed me to let go of some of the expectations I had of myself. It’s a crazy time when all parents are be...