You have no items in your cart. Want to get some nice things?
5 Ways to Address Parental Burnout to Improve Their Children’s Academic Performance
Parenting ought to be an exciting journey! However, with the complexity of today’s world, parents are often facing burnout as they juggle many responsibilities. From working full-time jobs and keeping up with expenses, to maintaining a healthy family life while supporting their children academically and emotionally – including many other roles, tasks and responsibilities. Parents often face increasing pressures on a daily basis, which can cause them to drown into depression and burnout if not well taken care of.
As per research findings, 82% of parents in the UK show warning signs of parental burnout. When parents reach this level of exhaustion, it can negatively affect their children’s academic performance as parents struggle to offer guidance and support to their children. Therefore, solving the parental burnout issue will not only be beneficial to parents but also to children. There are many signs to identify parental burnout, including physical, mental and emotional exhaustion. So let’s explore some ways to address it.
1. Parents Should Prioritise Self-Care
A tired body and mind can’t achieve much. Parents have the tendency to overwork themselves in order to keep up with family expenses, house chores, and other responsibilities while neglecting their self-care. This has negative impacts on their health and leaves them exhausted or burned out. And as a chain reaction of this burnout, parents will feel fatigued, less productive at work and less supportive or completely uninvolved in their children’s academics. This can affect their children’s academic performance.
Parents need to consider their self-care with high importance as it helps them regulate their health well and carry on with their responsibilities. Self-care doesn’t always have to be costly. It can be from simple relaxing activities like taking a walk in a tranquil environment, doing a hobby or practising mindfulness. The goal here is for parents to clear their minds, reduce stress and relieve themselves from fatigue and exhaustion. Considering this, self-care needs to be as regular as possible, as it plays an essential role in preventing burnout. For example, parents can incorporate it in their daily routine by scheduling 30 minutes or 1 hour for self-care daily.
Moreover, work-life balance is crucial to avoid burnout. Parents need to set clear boundaries between their work commitments, personal commitments and family responsibilities. Concentrating all their time and energy on their jobs only and ignoring other aspects of their lives will create an imbalance and lead to frustration and lack of personal fulfilment. One of the ways to tackle this is by creating a balanced daily schedule that includes professional goals, family goals and personal goals. So that parents will be making daily progress harmoniously in diverse aspects of their lives.
2. Parents Need to Delegate and Share Responsibilities
Many parents experience burnout because they take too much on themselves. There needs to be a healthy balance in sharing responsibilities in order to prevent physical and emotional exhaustion. Due to the lack of shared responsibilities, single parents tend to feel more anxious and mentally ill compared to married ones. Based on research, a majority of single parents reported feeling anxious almost daily compared to those who share responsibilities with their partners. Furthermore, 32% of single mothers experience moderate or severe psychological distress, compared to 19% of married mothers.
For parents who are still together, they can help each other with simple tasks in order to ease the workload on each other and collectively overcome the responsibilities that come with parenting. For instance, they can take turns helping children with homework and simple chores, ensuring that resting time is maximised and prioritising each other’s mental health. On the other hand, single parents can involve their children in some chores and household responsibilities based on their age and capacities. This will not only prevent single parents from overworking themselves, but it will also make their children responsible and teach them some life skills that will help them to take care of themselves as they grow.
As responsibilities are delegated and shared in a healthy and balanced way, parents will have more time and energy to spare for themselves and better support their children academically.
3. Improving Parent-Child Communication
Often, when parents are struggling with burnout, they become distant from their children and tend to communicate less with them. Therefore, fostering effective communication with their children will help alleviate the pressure parents face. Creating a space that makes their children feel comfortable talking about their academic journey will help parents have an idea of what their children are also facing and provide advice or support when needed.
Another benefit of an effective parent-child relationship is that it helps maintain the bond between parents and children amidst the occupations and busyness around. This warmth and closeness soothe emotional pains and relieve loneliness. Many parents are drowning in loneliness. Burnout, combined with isolation, can be very fatal to one’s mental health! These moments of quiet communication with their children do not need to revolve around tense topics; they can just be talking about their best memories, or doing a relaxing activity together, like watching a movie, eating a pizza or baking together.
4. Join the Parent Hub to Receive Valuable Support
Research shows that when parents experience burnout, it can affect their ability to provide ongoing support to their children. And this can lead to increased behavioural issues for young people and poor academic performance. For this and many other reasons, we developed the GT Scholars Parent Hub, which is an online support hub where parents are empowered with the tools they need to reduce burnout for themselves and support the mental health, wellbeing and behaviour of their children.
Through the Parent Hub, we will be working with schools to empower parents to improve their children’s behaviour at school. This offer includes expert-led workshops, online courses, coffee and chat sessions, resources for parents and many other benefits to ensure that parents are properly equipped with the tools they need to offer ongoing support to their children. You can book a meeting with us to discuss more about this offer, which is available for your schools and parents.
5. Parents Need to Seek Support When Needed
Parents shouldn’t hesitate to seek support or ask for help when necessary. They don’t have to sink trying to solve absolutely everything on their own. They can reach out to reliable family members, friends or colleagues to help them cope with difficulties when need be. There should be at least someone willing to offer a helping hand. Sometimes, the demands of parenting, work and family life can be so overwhelming! Assistance from a reliable person could make a huge difference!
Moreover, parents can seek professional support from a counsellor or a therapist if necessary. For instance, coaching or therapy sessions can be very advantageous to parents experiencing burnout. Also, they can opt for mentoring or tutoring for their children, so that they get relieved from academic pressures while they devise a balanced way to deal with burnout. Additionally, there are forums and communities designed to help parents experiencing burnout. Therein, parents can network with other parents who faced similar challenges and overcame them. This can provide parents with a sense of belonging and ensure that they are not fighting alone.
Ready to Explore the Parent Hub?
Parental burnout is a real and spreading concern that negatively affects both parents and children. Your school can start making a difference from today by supporting parents through the Parent Hub, and improving pupils’ behaviour both within and outside school. When a school signs up for the Parent Hub, parents of their learners will receive individual login access to valuable resources that will empower them and equip them to support their children.
At GT Scholars, we understand the challenges that parents and schools face when it comes to children’s academic performance. That’s why we have devised strategies and programmes to bring valuable support and help young people to reach their full potential.
We’d love to invite you to meet with us to discuss how the Parent Hub can improve pupil behaviour at your school! Our Parent Hub Special offer is still valid. You can book a call with our School Partnerships Team here!
GT Scholars is an award-winning education company and social enterprise. We run high-impact tutoring, mentoring & enrichment programmes for young people aged 11-18. If you’d like to give your child the support, skills and strategies needed to achieve their academic and career aspirations, you're in the right place!
Click here to subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Click here to subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Latest posts by GT Scholars (see all)
