Not Everything Is Time-Sensitive
Dear Special Parent,
Some exhaustion follows effort, but a more destabilizing kind sets in before effort even begins. It takes hold when urgency becomes constant.
Many parents raising medically or developmentally complex children live inside a constant state of escalation, navigating stalled referrals, backlogged evaluations, therapy waitlists, insurance documentation, and constant school demands. Institutions move at a snail’s pace while their internal clock accelerates.
Over time, sustained urgency changes the body. The nervous system is built to respond to time-sensitive threat, but when the signal to act never quiets, it shifts into protection mode: flexibility narrows, nuance disappears, decision-making becomes more rigid, and risk feels amplified when the brain has been running too fast for too long. And because nervous systems synchronize under stress, a parent who stays braced transfers that state to their child.
Don’t get me wrong. Some situations truly do require urgency. Rapid loss of skills, escalating instability, or sudden neurological change demand swift movement every single time. The problem is when background pressure mimics those high-need moments, making everything feel time sensitive. And when digital noise and continuous input blur the difference between true regression and ordinary fluctuation.
Families may then sprint from one specialist to another because slowing down feels dangerous. But indiscriminate acceleration can obscure what’s actually happening. The task, then, is matching pace to biology: urgent decline requires immediate movement, while uneven but steady progress requires close tracking.
If worry about your child has taken up residence in your body—tightening your chest, fragmenting your sleep, thinning your patience—know this: it reflects a nervous system shift from sustained urgency, not personal inadequacy.
The work here is separating true time-sensitive change from artificial pressure. This requires widening the view, tracking patterns over days and weeks, and distinguishing meaningful change from ordinary fluctuation. That kind of discernment is built through repetition, and over time it changes how you move: fewer reflex decisions, better pacing, and a response that stays aligned with your child’s actual trajectory.
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This essay sits within the larger framework of The Miswired Child, my forthcoming book on how neurological load accumulates in the developing brain long before a diagnosis, and how modern systems compound that strain through delay, misdirection, and missed timing.
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