Parenting a child on the autism spectrum often means pouring energy into your child’s needs, sometimes at the expense of your own well-being. In this episode of Autism: A New Perspective, Kat Lee speaks with Lisa Palasti—RDI® consultant, parent, and director of RDI professional training in Canada—about the vital role of self-care for parents.
Lisa shares from her personal and professional experience why self-care is not selfish but essential for sustaining your ability to parent with patience, resilience, and presence. The conversation explores common barriers parents face—like guilt, lack of time, or social isolation—and offers practical, realistic strategies for weaving self-care into daily life. From social connection to health appointments, from carving out small moments of rest to protecting priorities, Lisa reminds us that when parents thrive, children thrive too.
If you’ve ever wondered how to find balance in the midst of parenting challenges, this conversation will encourage you to begin where you are and take meaningful steps toward nurturing your own well-being.
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Full Transcript
Kat Lee: Welcome back to Autism, A New Perspective, the podcast show where we help you understand what is going on in the mind of your child. And we encourage you that growth for your child is possible. I’m Kat Lee, and in this week’s podcast, I sat down with Lisa Palasti, RDI consultant, parent, and director of RDI professional training in Canada.
Lisa and I talked about parents. Self-care is not selfish. Let’s listen in.
Lisa, we are talking about self-care is not selfish. And I know when I asked you to join and talk about this in regards to really everybody, but specifically about our parents who may be caring for a two-year-old all the way to an older adult, that self-care is not only not selfish, it’s incredibly important. And when I asked you to join, you said, I have so much to say about that.
And why do you feel so passionately about it? That was a beautiful reaction, by the way. Thank you.
Lisa Palasti: Well, because it’s how I’ve lived my life. It’s how I’ve been able to stay present and available for my children. I know that if I depleted myself to the point where I don’t have anything left to give, then, you know, I’ve got nothing.
Right? So I’ve worked hard all of my life to make sure that I was taking time to refuel myself when needed and to, yeah, so that I could be present and I could show up in the best, the best possible version of myself. It does not mean that I, I, I, somebody wants, or sometimes people use the term finding balance.
And I don’t, I mean, I think you can find it, but you’re going to lose it too. So it’s, I think of life more as a balancing, you know, process. So it doesn’t mean that I’ve always taken that time for self-care, but I do know that it’s critically important and it’s, it has showed up in my life in many different forms, in many different ways over the years.
And it was something that I think, you know, in a way I kind of demanded of my family from the beginning so that I set the tone for the fact that mama needs this. It actually, my great-grandmother, Mama Mae, used to say, if mama ain’t, if mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.
Kat Lee: Well, why do you think there’s, and I know you’re an amazing professional, but so much of you is as a parent. Why do you think as parents, it’s a feeling of selfishness to have self-care? I think that’s a very interesting phenomenon, like that’s what can take over.
Lisa Palasti: Mm-hmm. I think because people are not putting themselves on the table in terms of their importance to their family dynamic and their system. And perhaps they just don’t understand that if they’re not in a good place, if they’re not taking care of themselves, then they’re not going to be able to provide for their family in the way that they truly want to.
They want so much to be able to provide and do all the things that they think that their kids will need help with. But if they’re depleted and exhausted and tired and grumpy, then how can they? The thing that I love about RDI is that we focus on the parent and helping the parent to mindfully and intentionally become the best versions of themselves so that they can then help their children become the best versions of themselves.
And that’s a parallel process that I don’t think can happen unless it’s coming from the top down. So I think it’s a mindset, and it could be based off of even how somebody else was raised. You know, that is selfish and that you should think of everybody else first.
But how can you be there? How can you get nothing from nothing?
Kat Lee: I think of all the areas this applies to, and I kind of get overwhelmed because it’s not just one area or another. And one of the ones that can be most neglected, and it might surprise people, but can be social, that social self-care is important for so many reasons. That could just be a whole visit for us.
It could be. Because that’s one area that I think parents can feel really selfish about. But humans need social connection.
Of course, we’re all different, which we love. And some people have more needs. I don’t want to say more, but it differs, we’ll say, of course.
But we need that. And that is one of the most neglected things when vulnerability enters the family. And I think this is true with children or if you’re taking care of an older adult or whatever the case may be.
That whole social piece feels very selfish. It’s not. What do you think?
Lisa Palasti: Well, I did a deep dive study during COVID to find out what the leading doctors in the field of psychology and mental health felt about what was the number one thing that people could do during COVID and social isolation and the stress that COVID brought. And you know what they said? Across the board, every single one of them said social.
Social. To connect with other people. And there has been times in my life where I did not feel like being social at all.
But I actually almost forced myself to sometimes just pick up the phone or just carve out time to go for a walk with a friend. I mean, those things are pretty easy to do. Or sometimes I go for a walk by myself and that’s when I pick up the phone.
But I’ve always found that it has lifted my spirits. As much as I didn’t feel like I wanted to do it in the first place, like I didn’t feel like I wanted to talk to somebody else, it always actually helped me feel less stress, more connected, and supported too. Just being able to talk to people that you care about and that care about you.
Kat Lee: You mentioned such an important element, which is time. And I looked for a long time, maybe my whole life, as time as a frenemy because time is what we have and it is such a valuable tool. But one of the things you hear, and we hear as consultants and as parents, is I just don’t have time.
Which I totally respect. I’m not one of those people who goes, oh, everyone’s busy. Stop it.
I know that parents, period, are busy with all kinds of things. And then when you add a vulnerability on top of which other things are going on, it really feels like I don’t have the time. One of the things I love about RDI is we work with parents to figure out where they can carve that time out or, and here’s the frenemy part, I hate to call it an enemy, but where we’re doing things we really don’t have to do.
I think both of those principles are so important, don’t you?
Lisa Palasti: Oh, absolutely. I like that big rocks theory. I think that Dr. Stephen Covey had come up with where you want to put the big rocks into the pot first before the smaller rocks or the little pebbles or the sand. Because if you put all that little stuff in there first, you’re never going to put the big, the big rocks aren’t going to fit. But if you put the big rocks in at the bottom, then all the other stuff will, you know, it’ll sift its way through and sort itself out. But you got to prioritize.
You got to get clear about what your priorities are. And I think that people get a little bit lost in the overwhelm and the noise, you know, the distractions that are going on in the world. And well, how about smartphones?
I mean, that’s a huge problem today. So I think that people need to be a little bit more protective of their time and how they’re spending it and reflect on that and what, you know, what got in the way. You know, I do that.
I don’t like to be on my phone all the time. I don’t like to play words with friends for more than five or 10 minutes at a time. So, and I think it’s really important to get a little creative when you’re thinking about how you’re going to try to carve out that time.
Because some people don’t have, they don’t have other caregivers to leave their children with. If so many parents that I’ve talked to, when’s the last time you’ve been on a date? I just started with a new family.
I said, when’s the last time you’ve been on a date? And they literally said four years. And then I said, I gave them the, I prescribed them the goal of going out on dates.
And even if that means a lunch date when the kids are in school, then they could do that. It doesn’t have to be because they don’t have caregivers that they can just drop the kids off easily with. But also it could just be even a night where they, after the kids go to bed, they just maybe sit down and have a nice little romantic dinner with some candlelight or just some time themselves.
But here’s the other caveat is I tell them, and when you do that, I don’t want you to talk about autism. And they’re like, what? We always talk about autism.
Well, we have to stop moving at such a frantic pace. And in our work, we try to help families move out of crisis and help improve the quality of life for the whole family. And that means the marriage.
That means for the individual self that they have time to spend with their friends or going to a workout class or some hobby that they like. Marriage and the other siblings too. So I think it’s reflecting on the calendar or on the schedule and then trying to carve out some regularly scheduled time.
Even family walks can be a beautiful downtime that can be a regulatory process of doing it each and every day. And it’s amazing. It’s amazing what can happen during those kind of family walks if they become a routine thing.
And it’s self-care for the whole family, right?
Kat Lee: Yeah, it is. And I was thinking as you were talking, I love what you said in the beginning. It’s balance is kind of like that, you know, it doesn’t stay balanced because things are being added and taken away.
And I was thinking just to be sure everybody understood that as I always say, as you know, hypocrite alert, I have been on the wrong balance if there’s a wrong balance, but the balance that’s not on self-care at times. So we understand if you’re not there, there’s no judgment, but it’s something to work toward. And that is one of the things that in RDI helped me so much was just the mindfulness about it, thinking about it, considering this, not just, I can’t do that, but thinking about it.
You don’t have to do it tomorrow or the next week, but consider could you, or think about do you need to do this? And when you’re in that process, you start finding the balance, getting closer together. And then you start being able to make more mindful decisions about how to use your time.
And sometimes you will find yourself, your things happen that kind of do that to you that we’re not completely in control of. But I really liked that you started our visit talking about that. And before we go, I want to talk about, because there’s so many areas we can talk about with this, and that just leads us to another future visit.
But before we go, medical care, because I do think that parents sometimes start putting off regular doctor’s appointments, whether it be for dentists or other healthcare things in the future. Not all do, I know that, but it is a concern for me because medical things catch up with you and they tend to not always be more progressive if you wait. So if you can get yourself on a self-care plan, and if you can’t do it for yourself, do it for your family, don’t you think?
Lisa Palasti: Oh, absolutely. It’s just critical that people are aware that there’s a lot of studies about long-term ongoing stress and how it can affect one’s health as well. So people, I just would really like to encourage anybody that’s listening is to think about taking care of your health.
It could just be that one little first step. Again, in balancing, lately I carry this water bottle around, and it even has this nice little bracelet. But I recognize that I was not drinking enough water, and I just started with that.
Like, no, I’m just going to try to get in enough water a day, and it really, you could tell it made a difference. But it could be the littlest things that they’re starting to do to try to help move the needle in the right direction. But yes, of course, if you have a toothache, you got to get to the dentist.
You need to get your teeth cleaned on a regular basis to make sure you’re not getting cavities. And if you’ve got a health concern, you don’t want to put it off in case that it could become worse, or maybe it’s keeping you up at night, and you’re worrying, and it’s nothing. But I think it’s very important.
I think that’s one of the things that does keep our parents up at night, is worrying if something would happen to them. And so this kind of goes back to self-care. Well, just take care of yourself and do what you can.
And I realize that people don’t have the finances to go out for a massage or go pay for some lavish day spa things. But there’s a lot of things that you can do to try to improve your state of mind, your stress states, and even just your physical activity. And little bits, walking further into the store or taking the stairs versus the elevator.
I used to listen to happy music when I couldn’t get out of the house, and I didn’t have anybody else to watch my children. I would put on Jack Johnson and a few others, Kelly Kilby and Jason Mraz. They’re all happy music people, in my opinion.
But I made myself a playlist, and I would actually start off my day playing that music first thing in the morning for my whole family to hear. But then sometimes I would just listen to my headphones because I needed a little break. So there’s lots of different creative ways that I think that people can find to try to just, again, move the needle just a little bit, try to build that momentum.
And there’s a book actually called Lean In. And it’s a, oh, I can’t remember the name of the author. But every day for 30 days, she just gives one little tip to try to do.
And so it’s not so much to try to do all at once. But if you just take it one piece at a time, I do think people can get there.
Kat Lee: And thanks for joining us for Autism, A New Perspective, the podcast show where we help you understand what is going on in the mind of your child. And we encourage you that growth for your child is possible. I’m Kat Lee.
See you next time.
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