Your kid is gone,

and you just want them back.

My child was completely unrecognizable.

Up until that point, we had been cruising through life preeeetty close to normal. Sure, every day was hard, but I thought that's just how parenting had to be.

I thought everyone had to have their child sleep in a pitch black room, and that everyone had to cut up their sandwiches just so, and everyone had elaborate routines just to get out the door.

It was hard, but we were making it.

But then one day, my child started refusing to go to school. They started throwing things at their siblings and melting down with behaviors so extreme that none of us knew what to do. And even worse, they could no longer use the toilet. They could only poop in the yard. Using a pooper-scooper for my own child was not on my parenting bingo card.

"You just need better boundaries."

I tried that and mercy did it make everything 10x worse! Now my child was terrified of me and saying they didn't want to be alive. I tried googling everything. I read all the books, tried new therapists and parenting programs. But it didn't matter how gently I parented or how strictly I held boundaries--Nothing worked to bring my kid back or bring our family back to stability.

But when I learned my kid was in burnout,

that's when everything.

It wasn't that I was the world's worst parent.

I just didn't know how to support a child in burnout.