Taking Care of Ourselves as Parents First: Sensory, Executive Function, and Energy Needs
By Brittni Winslow MS, OTR/L
As parents, we are always taught that sacrifice is part of the job description. “It’s all a season.”
“They are only young once.”
“I’ll sleep again in another eighteen years.”
We hear these things so often that we start to say them ourselves, because somewhere along the way we were told that self-sacrifice is what makes us a good parent.
My First Hand Experience
I believed that for a long time. As an entrepreneur with three children, I constantly felt the pull between excelling at work and showing up as the rock star mom I wanted to be.
Society has a way of telling us we need to work like we do not have children and parent like we do not work, and that impossible standard leaves most of us worn down, short-tempered, and quietly hard on ourselves because we feel like we are never fully in the right place at the right time.
As a pediatric occupational therapist, I get the privilege of stepping into the daily lives of families and hearing about what is really happening at home.
I hear about the child who holds it together at school and completely falls apart the moment they walk through the front door. I hear about sleep struggles, picky eating, and the ache of watching a child who cannot seem to find their footing socially.
What is almost always missing from those early conversations is any mention of how the parent is doing. That piece usually comes a few sessions in, once trust has been built and the walls begin to come down a little. And behind that wall, almost without exception, is a parent who is also dysregulated, exhausted, and overwhelmed. Someone who has been white-knuckling through the days and, somewhere along the way, completely lost track of themselves. If any part of that resonates with you, this is for you.
Have You Experienced This?
Let me paint a picture. It is a Tuesday evening and you have just survived a back-to-back day with almost no margin to breathe. Lunch was an afterthought. You somehow pulled together a plan for dinner and called everyone to the table, and then your six-year-old decides that what you made is absolutely disgusting and begins melting down on the kitchen floor. At the same moment, you feel your phone vibrating in your back pocket and realize it is the babysitter calling out for tomorrow.
So what do you handle first?
The child on the floor? The babysitter? Having a meltdown yourself?
The most important thing I want you to take away from this is this. When we are dysregulated ourselves, we cannot co-regulate the people who depend on us.
As long as your child is safe, the most effective thing you can do in that moment is take a step back, get yourself regulated, and then step back in. If there is another adult nearby who can hold things together, let them. Consider this your permission slip to put your oxygen mask on first.
I can say with complete honesty that I have very rarely, if ever, successfully co-regulated a child when I myself was dysregulated. On the occasions where I have pushed through anyway, I was so depleted afterward that even the most basic tasks felt out of reach. The tank was empty.
Most of us have spent some time exploring sensory processing and executive function in the context of our children, and that work is incredibly valuable. But very few of us have ever turned that same lens on ourselves, and that is exactly where I want to start.
You cannot pour from an empty cup, but more than that, you were never supposed to.
Your Sensory Needs Matter Too
Sensory processing is not something that only applies to children. Every single one of us has a nervous system with preferences, tolerances, and limits. Some of us are highly sensitive to sound, and a loud, chaotic dinner table after a long day is overwhelming in a physiological way. Some of us need movement to stay regulated and feel increasingly edgy and irritable when we have been sitting in back-to-back meetings or driving carpool for hours. Some of us are touch-sensitive, and by the end of the day, after being touched and needed and tugged on since morning, there is simply nothing left to give.
Understanding your own sensory profile is essential. When you know what your nervous system needs to stay regulated, you can begin to build small but intentional moments of sensory input into your day. A few minutes of quiet before the house wakes up. A short walk outside during your lunch hour. A warm shower in the evening as a signal to your body that the demands of the day are over. These are regulation strategies that matter just as much for you as they do for your child.
It is also crucial to understand your own sensory triggers. If noise is your limit, having a plan for high-volume moments at home will serve you far better than simply hoping you can tolerate it. If visual clutter sends your nervous system into overdrive, small changes to your environment can lower your baseline stress in ways that feel almost immediate. The question to start asking yourself is the same one we ask about children: what does my nervous system need right now?
Executive Function Is Not Unlimited
Executive function refers to the brain’s management system, the cognitive skills responsible for planning, organizing, initiating tasks, managing time, holding information in working memory, and shifting between demands. And just like any resource, it is finite. By the end of a day where you have been making decisions, managing logistics, solving problems, and holding everyone else’s needs in your mind, your executive function capacity is often significantly depleted.
This is why the evening hours can feel so impossibly hard. You have not become a worse parent as the day goes on, but rather the cognitive load you have been carrying all day has worn down the very systems you need to respond calmly, think flexibly, and make good decisions in the moments that tend to demand the most of you.
One of the most powerful things you can do for yourself is reduce that cognitive load wherever possible. Routines that run on autopilot mean fewer decisions when your brain is tired. Laying out tomorrow’s needs the night before takes those items off the mental list that runs quietly in the background. Batching decisions, like planning the week’s meals on Sunday, protects your capacity for the moments when you actually need it. These are executive function supports that you deserve just as much as any child who struggles to get out the door in the morning, and building them into your life is not a sign of weakness but of wisdom.
Your Energy Budget Is Real
Every person has an energy budget, and not all of us spend and restore energy in the same way. Some of us are energized by connection and start to lose steam when we have been alone too long. Others need solitude to restore and find that too much social demand, even with people they love, chips away at their capacity over time. Understanding which way you are wired, and honoring that without guilt, can greatly impact how sustainable your days feel.
The problem is that most parents are running a chronic energy deficit without ever stopping to acknowledge it. We keep making withdrawals without making deposits, and then we are surprised when there is nothing left. Part of supporting your own regulation means learning to recognize what actually restores your energy versus what you have convinced yourself should be restoring but is not.
It also means paying attention to timing. If you know you hit a wall at four in the afternoon, planning the most cognitively demanding or emotionally charged conversations for that window is going to work against you every time. When possible, protect your high-energy windows for the things that require the most of you, and give yourself permission to scale back during the times when your tank is running low.
Building It Into Your Days
The Smoother Days framework I use with families asks us to look at sensory needs, executive function demands, and energy dynamics together. When your sensory system is overloaded, your executive function takes a hit. When your executive function is depleted, your capacity to regulate your emotional response narrows. When your energy is low, everything becomes harder. When all three are happening at once, which for most parents is simply called a Tuesday, it does not take much to tip the whole system over.
The goal is not to eliminate hard moments. The goal is to build enough support into your daily structure that your nervous system is not starting from a place of depletion every single day. That might look like a morning routine that includes something your body needs before the demands begin. It might look like a transition ritual between work and home that signals to your system that you are shifting gears. It might look like a five minute pause before you walk into a hard moment, so that you are responding from a regulated place rather than a reactive one.
None of this requires a complete overhaul of your life. It starts with the same curiosity we extend to our children: what does my nervous system actually need? When am I most regulated, and what is present in those moments? When do I find myself dysregulated, and what is happening right before? The answers to those questions are the beginning of building a life that supports you, so that you can more fully show up for the people who need you most.
You cannot pour from an empty cup, but more than that, you were never supposed to.
About the author. Brittni Winslow MS, OTR/L is the Owner, Executive Director of Emerge Pediatric Therapy. Emerge Pediatric Therapy is dedicated to raising the standards of care by providing quality occupational, speech, and physical therapy paired with wraparound care. This includes caregiver education and home programming so that each child and family is treated as a whole, with care and respect.
Spread the word
Medical Disclaimer: All content found on the HER Health Collective Website was created for informational purposes only and are the opinions of the HER Health Collective experts and professional contributors. The Content is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health providers with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read on this Website. If you think you may have a medical emergency, call your doctor, go to the emergency department, or call 911 immediately.