I just saw a meme the other day that was a cartoon of a mom sitting in a hospital, bandaged and casted from head to toe, sitting in a wheelchair. The caption underneath read, “My kids would still ask me for snacks.”
I laughed so hard because it could not be truer. I’ve had a kiddo walk past their dad on the couch to come find me in the shower to ask me to open their water bottle.
I honestly cannot explain this phenomenon, but I’ve never met a family where they don’t say the same thing is true in their house. In 99.9% of families, mom is the “Chief Question Answerer.” And these questions run the gamut. Everything from, “Mom, can I watch a show?” to “Mom, can you sign this permission slip?” to “Mom, what happens when we die?”
In the moment, it might seem that answering a little question isn't a big deal, but I just read an article that said moms get asked almost 400 questions a day.
FOUR HUNDRED.
No wonder we’re all exhausted.
Decision fatigue is a real thing! Plus you have to add all the other things on top of that that we’re deciding on throughout the day. What should we have for dinner? What preschool should we put our kid in? When can I go visit my sister? What should we get the cousins for Christmas?
All the things.
When we become the Chief Question Answerer as well as the Chief Figure Outer in our homes, there’s a couple things that happen. First, like I mentioned, we get worn down. After you’ve already answered 285 questions at dinner, deciding whether or not your kid can go to the park seems like they’ve just asked you to solve a quadratic equation.
And a worn out mom can easily become an angry mom. A distracted mom. A disconnected mom.
The second thing that happens is that we can get resentful towards our spouse. Even being the person who has to say yes or no to snacks ALL the time can feel like you’re the gatekeeper. Like you’re the only one who has to say no. And that can easily make you feel like your spouse isn’t contributing. Even over something as silly as snacks.
When in reality, most of the time, they just aren’t being asked the things. More than likely, they’d be happy to open the popsicles or to help with homework. But, at least in our house, our kids have gotten into the habit of coming to me for everything. Even though their dad is perfectly capable of doing it all. And is probably right in front of their faces.
So how do we divide things up so that we both feel good about our share of the emotional decision making?
First, we’ve gotta break the habit from our kids. They don’t know they’re doing it and they’re certainly not ignoring their dad’s perfectly skilled fruit-snack-opening fingers on purpose. Just like we’ve divided up time in our home where one parent will get up early with the kids while the other kind of tucks away for some alone time, we can do the same things with this.
Maybe you divide up the days based on who’s making dinner. If it’s dad’s night, then mom fields all the questions and vice versa (and yes, that does mean dads can have nights cooking dinner!) If that doesn’t seem like it would flow in your house, try a different way to divide it.
However you decide, make sure it’s known to your kids and your spouse. “For the next two hours, all requests go to dad.” And then don’t give in. This is a great opportunity to give your spouse a chance to see just how many things are requested of you all day long.
The second thing we can do to help redistribute the weight of this is to get better at asking for help and expressing our needs. For a long time, every Christmas my husband would say to me, “Thanks for handling everything this year.” And that would enrage me. I’d think, “Well if I didn’t handle it all, nothing would get done!”
Once I realized that I wasn’t even TRYING to hand off things to him, it all got simpler. I made a list of the 497 things I had to do around the holidays and told him the top 5 things that stressed me the most. I asked him to pick 3 of them and let him know that I would be SO much more relaxed if he could handle those.
And you know what? He did them! Not exactly how I would have done them, but it was so much better than me running around trying to fit it all in while still working full-time.
Moms are reeeeally good at becoming martyrs for things they could have just asked for help with.
ASK FOR HELP. And not just with the things that seem like they need to get checked off your list. Because sometimes we do need help with carpool and making the snacks and doing the laundry. But sometimes we also just need someone to decide for us if we should cook chicken or fish.
Because it doesn’t matter if it’s deciding something that could greatly affect your family or just something inconsequential, you deserve to do it
within community.
