I’ve recently started the Parenting Under Medical Pressure course with a small group of parents, and the conversations have been incredibly honest, tender, and real.

One thing that keeps coming up is how hard it can be for parents of medically complex children to feel truly understood.

Many parents carry the extra weight of needing to explain their child’s needs over and over again — to family members, day-care, schools, health professionals, and wider support systems. Sometimes they spend enormous amounts of time and emotional energy advocating, only to hear things like:

“Maybe you’re just an anxious first-time parent.”
“Every child does that.”
“It’s probably normal.”

That experience of not being fully believed can feel deeply exhausting.

Parents also shared how hard it can be to navigate behaviour, big emotions, discipline, boundaries, and connection when everyone is already running low on sleep, capacity, and nervous system reserves.

There’s often this quiet pressure in modern parenting too — the comparison, the noise, the ideal standards online — and when you’re already parenting alongside medical complexity, it can feel like there’s very little room left to breathe.

Inside the course, we gently explore questions like:

What parenting style are we currently carrying?
What kind of family atmosphere do we actually want to create?
How do we come onto the same page with our partners and support people?
How do we care for our own hauora while carrying so much?

We also spend time with Te Whare Tapa Whā, Sir Mason Durie’s Māori model of wellbeing, looking at how the four walls of wellbeing can support both the parent and the whole whānau.

Research in nervous system science and attachment-informed care suggests that when parents feel safer, more supported, and more regulated, clearer thinking and steadier connection become more possible. 

What I’m witnessing in these groups is not perfection.

It’s parents slowly exhaling.
Parents feeling less alone.
Parents finding language for experiences they’ve carried quietly for a very long time.

And perhaps most beautifully, parents beginning to build connected community with each other.

There is so much wisdom already inside these families.

I feel deeply honoured to hold space for it.