Here are some great tips from our Parent Panel dad Ben Wakeling about how to stay on top of stress when you’re a parent.

Parents have been known to fib about things to other mums and dads. “My child sleeps through the night” is a popular one, but the massive black bin bags under their eyes tell the real story. “My birth was so smooth and calm” is another, when you know full well that she shrieked like a banshee and clawed her husband’s face to pieces.

But there’s one thing that no parent can deny: that being a mum or a dad is stressful. I recently took a day off from work to look after my two children while my wife went on a training course. I was looking forward to it: a bit of bonding time with my kids, I thought. By half nine in the morning, with one screaming baby at my feet and a three year-old who thinks he’s Spiderman bouncing around the living room, I was longing for the relative calm of the office.

Stress should never be underestimated, though. It can cause severe conditions such as depression, which will inevitably have a knock-on effect on the quality of your parenting. It can turn you into a gibbering wreck who never leaves the house and loses all his friends. And so, it is important that you can spot when you’re stressed and take steps to try and regain some sanity.

There are three main ways in which you can identify whether or not you are suffering from stress, and that is by looking for changes in your physical appearance, your emotional state and your behavioural attitude. 

• Physical: You find yourself losing your appetite, for example. Whereas before you would happily gobble down a Sunday roast and go looking for seconds, now the mere thought of eating makes you turn up your nose. Adversely, it could make you eat more, and turn into one of those people who has to wash themselves with a sponge on the end of a stick. You can also feel more tired (not uncommon when you’re a parent), or – in some severe cases – suffer from heart palpitations.
• Emotional: Whereas once you were quite a happy-go-lucky kind of person, you’re now constantly depressed and negative. You’re also a worrier, and spend the whole day with your forehead wrinkled by anxiety.
• Behavioural: You may find your performance at work slipping as you struggle to gain motivation; perhaps you’re always turning up late in the mornings. You find yourself isolated from others for no reason.

The good news is that stress can be relieved, and the effects of relief are greater the earlier you spot the signs. Reducing stress is all about taking things one step at a time, and also ensuring that you set aside a bit of time for yourself every day, even if it’s just a few minutes.

If you have a day ahead that is particularly busy, where you’ll be ferrying children around in between thousands of appointments at various places, split the day up into thirds, or fifths, or whatever you feel comfortable with: and take each segment at a time. Plan your day so that appointments that are in a location close to one another are grouped, to save you legging it back and forth across the country.

It’s a wonder what a few deep breaths can do, as well. When things are nearing boiling point just take a few seconds for yourself, breathe deeply and regain your composure. You’ll achieve far more in this state of mind than you would if you were running around like a headless chicken. Don’t forget to reward yourself, either. A tub of ice cream or an hour on your favourite video game can do wonders for your stress levels, as can getting regular and uninterrupted bouts of sleep…but hey: you can’t have it all.

What stresses you out as a parent and how do you deal with it? Share your tips here and we’ll choose one person to receive one of our Twist N’Pop straw cups.

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