Parental Self-Care

A key part of the My Family assessment is to help parents understand the importance of managing their own self-care needs. This involves practitioners exploring the basic role and importance of the Sympathetic Nervous System, and the Parasympathetic Nervous System.

Establishing this basic understanding of the nervous system and how it influences everyday functioning (emotional, physical, and psychological functioning), helps parents to reflect on the importance of managing their own needs. It also enables them to respond to their child/ren's needs in a consistent and predictable way.

Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS)

As stated by Deb Dana (2021), the energy of the SNS influences our ability to move through the world. For example, it regulates how our blood is pumped around our body and our breath patterns. It also manages our heart rhythm.

When we move out of safety and into perceived danger, we move into sympathetic survival. This triggers our body to start to release cortisol and adrenaline, and puts it in a state of fight or flight (a state of mobilization).

Parasympathetic Nervous System (PNS)

According to Porges and Porges (2023), the PNS is what enables us to slow our body down by essentially acting as our internal rest and relax system. The PNS activated when we feel safe and helps us to remain calm, collected, and social.

Body Budget

By using a concept coined by Lisa Feldman Barrett (2018), practitioners help parents to identify the everyday habits and rituals that allow them to effectively manage their Body Budget.

The term 'Body Budget' refers to the physical and emotional resources every parent needs to help them to function at their optimal level as an individual, and subsequently, as a parent. This could include them sleeping for 7-8 hours every night, exercising to manage their emotional and physical health or finding the time to enjoy some 'me time' and relax.

"If a community values its children, it must cherish its mothers."
John Bowlby