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I want to try something with you today. I want you to actually count what you do in a single day. Not to overwhelm you. Not to stress you out. But because I have a feeling that if you actually stopped and looked at it all — really looked — you would feel something shift inside you. Because most parents are carrying far more than they realize. And most of that carrying goes completely unseen. Let’s Start at the Beginning of Your Day The alarm goes off — or more likely a child or an animal beats it to the punch. You get up. You let the dog out. You start the coffee. You unload the dishwasher from last night because somehow that didn’t happen. You make breakfast. You get the kids up — which, let’s be honest, is its own Olympic event some mornings. You pack lunches. You remind someone about their library book. You throw in a load of laundry because if you don’t do it now it won’t happen. You get everyone out the door. And then you go to your actual job. The one you get paid for. And Then the Second Shift Begins You come home and dinner needs to happen. The laundry needs to move to the dryer. The dog needs a walk. Someone needs a ride to practice. Someone else has a game you need to cheer at. The permission slip that’s been sitting on the counter needs to be signed and returned. Someone is having big feelings and needs you to hold space for them. You prep tomorrow’s lunches while mentally running through what needs to happen in the morning. And somewhere in all of that you try to remember to drink enough water. That is not one job. That is not even two jobs. That is an extraordinary, relentless, beautiful, exhausting amount of human output — happening every single day — most of it completely invisible to the people around you and even to yourself. The Mental Load Nobody Talks About Enough 
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Dear Parent, I see you. I know you probably didn't wake up this morning feeling like a rock star. You woke up because someone needed something. Or because your alarm went off before you were ready. Or because your brain was already running through the list before your eyes were even open. And you got up anyway. That's the first thing I want you to notice about yourself today. You got up.   “You know what it's like having five kids? Imagine you're drowning. And someone hands you a baby.” -- Jim Gaffigan
Can you relate? Maybe not with having 5 kids, but do you feel at times you’re barely keeping your head above water when it comes to this parenting thing? Yesterday was “Swim a Lap Day”. All of my children have been on the swim team, and I’ve seen kids swim hundreds of laps over and over and over. One night at practice, a little guy was learning to swim on his back. The coach kept telling him, “Point your feet!” He pointed them straight up to the ceiling, smiled, and hardly moved. You’re not alone. Every parent has moments that we look back on and wonder why we lost our cool like that. Maybe it's an afternoon where you’re feeling extra irritable or “ triggered” by your kids' normal behaviors. Maybe it's a single episode of exploding at your kid when they make a mistake and then regretting it. Sometimes we find ourselves in a longer season of coming across as the “mad mom” or “explosive dad”.
I personally have an ongoing frustration with my oldest child who is now technically an adult, as he just celebrated his 18th birthday. For as long as he has been going to school, he has struggled with being ready to leave on time. I know he's capable of getting up and leaving on time because this fall when his football coach made it clear that arriving on time for school was a requirement for being eligible to play in the Friday night game, he did whatever it took to hot-foot it out of the house in time. But now, the football season is done and that external motivator isn't there. We are back to frustrating mornings of poor time management. I've tried many approaches to help him succeed. The most recent approach has been letting him choose to be late for school and explain it to the teachers himself. The end result was that he was late for school everyday for a week! I'm not seeing him learning from his mistakes quite yet 🫤 Today he was late again, and I became a “mad mom.” Can you think of your last angry parent moment? What led up to it? Usually it's a combination of factors. Something in our kids' behaviors, what they do or don't do, what they say or don't say, gets under our skin. But how resilient we are to these frustrations and our ability, in the moment, to pause and think of the response we want to have rather than reacting on our first impulse has a lot to do with how well our own basic needs are being met. When we have unmet needs we are going to feel more irritable, frustrated, impatient and inflexible, just like our kids feel when they have unmet needs. So the next time you find yourself feeling like the “mad mom” or “explosive dad”, consider these possible unmet needs and how you can meet them to help you stay more balanced and regulated.  How do you feel when you think about the fact that summer is at least half way done? It's ok to have mixed feelings about it. Summer can hold so many fun things, swimming, picnics, parks, fireworks, fairs! At the same time, for my family and lots of families that I work with, there is some summer burnout that happens around this point.
Summer burnout can happen for kids and for parents. It might be kids feeling a bit bored and starting to feel that all this time off is getting old. It might be parents feeling tired of all the driving to activities, or juggling their work while kids are at home, or navigating siblings fighting or whining. Here are a few ideas to help you enjoy this second half of summer, block burnout and build some more fun memories: |
AuthorDana Parisi Archives
October 2026
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