Fear of parking stopping me from being a good mum

[brightongull]

I am not sure parenting is the right topic for this but I couldn't find any that fit perfectly.

We currently live in a house with on street parking and we don't have a driveway. It can be hit and miss whether you can park on the street or near the house. There are no permits or anything and there are lots of people who have a car and a work van, or multiple car households.

I have always been a bit stressed about driving anywhere but since having my baby everything has got much worse.

I am becoming very reluctant to leave the house, and if we haven't left by 10/11am I will already feel like it is too late. If we do go out anywhere I feel very conscious of the time that we are arriving back and will worry about not parking. If my partner is there or driving I feel slightly better but I will very rarely go anywhere myself by car. (Even sometimes choosing 2 buses and a 1 hour journey over a 15 minute drive).

We applied for a driveway and it has taken 10 months for the council to reject the application. We are trying to appeal this but I feel pretty devastated.

We have just had our kitchen redone and I love our house but I honestly want to move just to get free from my anxieties. I have tried CBT and other therapies but it just hasn't seemed to make a palpable difference.

Can anybody relate to this? Has anyone overcome it properly? I know it sounds so silly, but it really is governing my life and I hate that it is.

Can you park further from the house if no space outside, then you DH can move the car when he returns home

If the issue is not being confident with physically parking, here are two suggestions.

(1) a car with the rear camera thing and a green box on the screen telling you when you're doing it right was a game changer for me.

(2) there are some expensive cars that will now physically park for you. Probably cheaper than moving house.

We bought a car that has the camera in the back and that has really helped the actually physical act of parking although I do think that is a part of it.

I think the anxiety is having to park further away or not finding anywhere at all and not being able to see the car or know if anything has happened to it. People drive poorly in the area and cars are often dinged etc. The other thing is like the struggle of carrying and baby and or all the stuff that you have to take out. I think also me getting really het up and stressed driving around the area stopping me from being able to park. Also, I hate conflict and worry if I "take someone else's spot", I will have a problem - even though I know that nobody can claim spots on the road.

But honestly writing it all down I am not even sure why this feels like such a big thing. We can get the bus and do sometimes but it does take a while. There isn't really anything to do around us in walking distance although I do go to the park etc.

Planning permission wasn't granted because of the proximity to a tree. We are seeing if we can move the dropped kerb further away etc but I am not holding out much hope for a quick resolution.

I think I shouldn't run either, but I just want to not think about parking anymore and fighting it seems hard.

Thank you all for the advice. I feel a bit silly writing this post but it is nice to know I am not alone and some of the things that you have suggested feel quite empowering.

I have a car that can park itself. I never use the function as I find the lack of control and seeing the steering wheel move all by itself more terrifying than doing the parking myself. Stupid or what?

You mentioned CBT.

That's all about rationalising. (I'm very basic terms).

You say you catch a bus but are worried about getting to and from the car with all the stuff needed.

Can you start with positively reminding yourself you manage the bus with baby and baby stuff and so can manage the car with it too?

Sorry you’re feeling this way OP.

Could you look at it this way, if you had to park further away and then walk isn’t that the same thing you’d be doing if you decided to do multiple buses for the same journey?

Whilst it would be annoying, the car could get bumped whether it was immediately outside your house or two streets away, and in the grand scheme of things it wouldn’t be the end of the world, would it?

What do you do when you drive somewhere where parking is somewhat difficult in the same way?

Yes I will always Google parking options religiously before leaving and it might put me off from going!

That made me laugh!

I used to be terrified of parking. I'd park 10 minutes walk away rather than parallel park in a small spot. It really helped me to watch You Tube videos about parallel parking and really understand how to do it. Then I made it my mission to practice, practice, practice. I'd take myself off on drives where I'd look for opportunities to practice parallel parking in small spots with no pressure on me and no-one in the car watching me. Now I find it easy and wonder why I ever found it so hard.

Excellent advice from @OakTreex upthread, also from someone who said Anxiety is fake, it’s a liar.
We all suffer from anxiety in some form or another, how you deal with it is the key. What is the worst think that can happen if you can’t find a parking spot? You either find a better one even though it means further to walk or you find one but it means you park a bit skew whiff, you’re not on a driving test so as long as you park safely forget about being judged. Ignore those who hassle you.
Confidence and driving experience will improve the more you drive.

I think it's a problem you need to tackle but for now keep a lightweight stroller in the car or always take a sling and just park in the nearest space that you're comfortable and happy with. If it's ten minutes away, well fuck it. The walk will do you good and maybe give you the incentive to sort the issue.

Go out at night when the roads are quiet and have a wee practice at parking in tricky spots. You can abandon it at any point and drive around to try parking elsewhere. You need to practice at a time when the pressure is off. So quiet roads, no rushing to be somewhere, no crying baby in the car.

Some great advice here op but I just wanted to say solidarity! I also live down a super busy main road - we have one small car port but that’s for dh’s car as I can’t get baby out safely - so I am often parking a street away and carrying baby and all the stuff etc back to the house, or baby is crying and traffic is piling up while I’m trying to parallel park. It’s hard! I’ve found the only thing that helps is forcing myself to do it and get on with it. Things get so much better with time. If I get nervous I think: worst case scenario, I won’t be parked so close to home. That’s fine, I’ll bring the sling. So what if a few non essentials get left in the car? Much more important that baby and I get to where we want/need to go. Also rarely, a lovely, big, close space is free and that makes my day lol. Keep at it, keep practicing and it will get easier.

Urgh I totally understand this. I live somewhere with a similar set up except it was more anywhere I had to drive to I had to parallel park. I had a driveway but was equally trapped because nowhere else had easy to park locations.

I used to do the same and walk everywhere or get the train /bus. This wasn't so bad for me as I lived near the train station with regular trains that then required a 30 min walk to the nearest hub in my area but was doable.

In your shoes I'd consider lessons to parallel park until I could actually do it. There is a technique. I then got a job in an area that I had to parallel park in (in the interview they lied and said I could use their car park, then retracted that once I started)
I actually got good at it after a year of practising it! I literally got laughed at in public many times previously for my bad parking. There's hope.

Got a couple of friends who've given up driving due to anxiety (this is as young mothers) and a few who are two anxious to learn to drive full stop. They are completely dependent on their husbands (or lifts from friends) anytime they or their kids want to do something which is inconvenient or impossible by public transport.

It's SO limiting on your life and will continue to be so all through the next 20 years of child-rearing. I don't have much advice other than I think you HAVE to do whatever it takes to get over it.

I have the same anxiety OP. I can park on a postage stamp but it's on street parking here and is often a nightmare so I don't go out often either. I even have a blue badge and marked disabled bay outside my house, but as soon as I leave, non-badge holders park in the space.

When I was anxious about driving I was worried about complicated junctions, having to turn right into busy roads with limited visibility and hill starts (even though nothing bad had ever happened). I used to google maps every journey and plan out a 'safe' route. This did work for a bit but then I'd get stressed if I had to divert from the route.

It became freeing when I stopped doing it and realised that nothing was ever as bad as I thought (and if there was a right turn with poor visibility I could just go left and turn in a side street if I needed to).

Thank you all again.

I tried going to the supermarket today as a time when I normally would have stayed in the house and it actually went okay... There was a space when I got back. But all the other times that hasn't been the case don't go away.

I will have a look out for Dare!

I don’t drive at all and I’m a great parent. Walk / get the bus / cycle / take a taxi.

I don't mean driving makes you a good parent.

I just mean that this anxiety stops me going places and doing things I want to do and that is the frustration.

A 20 minute car journey would get us somewhere that a 1-2 hour bus journey with several changes etc. So I may decide not to go.

OP, you put, “fighting it seems hard”. Fighting it is the issue. Don’t fight it. Think of yourself as falling into a fast-moving river. Do you thrash about and try to beat the tide, or do you lie still, give in to the water, and float?

Acceptance and letting yourself ‘float’ through anxiety is the only way through. Fighting it keeps you stuck. Let it in and accept that you feel this way but don’t let it stop you. You know, you probably need to push yourself to go out more and more so that you DO inevitably get into these situations and although you’ll feel anxious and unpleasant, you’ll see that you’re perfectly capable of handling everything that this throws at you.

”what if I can’t park? What if someone has a go at me about my parking?”

”Whatever happens, I’ll handle it.”

Often anxiety is just as much about underestimating our own ability of handling a situation as it is about the situation itself.

Yes op. Feel the fear and do it anyway. It will go away. But keep trying on the planning for driveway and if you can afford to and want to it's fine to move for a driveway. Everyone in an ideal world wants guaranteed parking by their front door, especially with a baby.
Although by about 3 they can be helpful, 5 or so it's not an issue I still would want a driveway.

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