Self-Care For Autism Parents | A reverse interview with Luminara Serdar | ABP Episode 87

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: How to Build Your Parenting Village

• What is a parenting village and why do you need one?
• How to choose the people and resources that will be part of your village.
• Lesson’s learned from Janeen’s life about the importance of a village.

Transcript of Episode

Before I get started today I want to respect that there may be a few stories and topics in this one that could be triggering. I’ve come to realize both as a autism parent and as a professional trauma therapist, that just talking about difficult things can be triggering to some people. SO I want to take a moment and recognize that because many autism parents have post traumatic stress responses because the nature of our parenting is so stressful and may include some of the events I’ll be discussing today. SO if you are triggered at all by stories of kids going missing or family members getting critically ill, this may not be the show for you today.

SO I just wanted to start with that so you know what to expect.

Why is building a village important?

I often talk about taking care of yourself as an autism parent. And one of my biggest suggestions is to build your village. It is said that it takes a village to raise a child, but it takes a bigger village to raise a child with autism and this village is more for your sake than anything else. Building your village is crucial because autism is hard enough- then life happens; a loved one dies, a job loss, an unexpected diagnosis, a major global pandemic...lots of things can happen and when they happen on top of our already complicated lives, they are even harder to handle. But if we have our village in place, this gets just a bit easier.

There are two times in our family’s life when having this village in place was necessary; when my son was 13 and he went missing behind our house in the woods, and two years ago when my husband had a heart attack and required bypass surgery. I’ll describe how our village helped in these two situations in a moment but first I want to address HOW to assemble your village, then I’ll weave in some stories about how it helped.

Identify the key players

These may include Doctors, sitters, respite workers, family you can trust, safe people, therapists for your child and for you. When my son Ben was younger, Our personal village includes a functional medicine doctor, a pediatric dentist that specialized in working with kids with disabilities, the grandparents, my friends, my husband’s softball/poker playing buddies, pharmacists, and my church prayer group; these players all have different roles and it’s important to be very intentional about defining these roles. Let’s talk about that next ...

So when my husband had a heart attack in the middle of the day two years ago, I was at work and he was home with our son- who just so happened to be taking a nap at that time. Luckily he called both his mother and 911 and was taken to the hospital by ambulance. During this time we had the support of friends and family who knew our situation, and came to our aid very quickly. Our parents and respite workers were already in place to come over and help with Ben so I could get to the hospital and know he was taken care of. We had friends drop off food, and come to the hospital to make sure we had the support we needed. These were people I knew I could count on.

Family and friends who didn’t live in the area sent texts daily, called and sent cards, which really makes such a difference when you’re going thru something like that you don’t think it does when you’re doing it for someone but I can tell you on the receiving end it was wonderful. Then there was a neighbor who the day after my husband’s heart attack came over to borrow something- when I told him what had happened, he said “Wow, hope he feels better”...and he never checked in again to see how we were doing. Never even asked how Joe’s surgery went. But that was okay because I already knew he was not one of my key village people. So because my expectations were realistic, I wasn’t surprised or disappointed when that happened and instead of dwelling on it was able to focus on my own family as they got support from th...