Perfect Parenting - a Neurodivergent Nightmare

Thoughts about our perfect parenting pressured society

If you’d rather listen to this, it is on audio here

If any of you have worked with me or read anything I’ve written, you’ll know I’m not a fan of the high pressure, intensive parenting culture that has become popularised in recent years. In my book, Parenting For Humans (UK version here and US here), I write about how societal parenting expectations give us what might look like nice, neat paths to follow but end up in a dead end of stress, anxiety and disconnection from our children. These dead ends, to me, are firstly, the pressure to raise perfect children, secondly, the pressure to be a perfect parent and then the final, really slippery dead end - the pressure to appear as if you’re doing all of that effortlessly.

Photo by Gabriel Soto on Unsplash

For all parents, that sort of high pressure, intensive parenting can be difficult. As I write in Parenting for Humans ‘These are paths that appear to lead you towards your child but often lead you in the opposite direction’. It can be an intensely difficult experience to feel like you’re working really hard at parenting in the way you feel you ‘should’ be, only to find that your child doesn’t respond the way that… well, that they’re ‘meant’ to.

And if your child is neurodivergent, or traumatised. Or both? Or you are neurodivergent. Or traumatised. Or both? What then?