White-Knuckling Parenting
The particular school-holiday feeling of loving your children deeply while also wanting everyone to please stop needing something from you for five consecutive minutes.
At the end of week one of the two-week school holiday I have found myself white-knuckling parenting again.
By white-knuckling, I mean getting through the day by doing what needs done while internally feeling like I am clinging to the side of a moving vehicle.
Everyone is fed. Everyone is alive. Minor disputes are being mediated. The toddler has asked for a snack three times while holding a snack. Someone needs help finding a charger. Someone else is devastated because someone looked at them in the wrong tone.
I am technically coping.
But only in the way women are “coping” when they have not had a full thought alone since breakfast.
It is not my favourite version of motherhood.
This is not the soft, grounded, deeply present energy I like to imagine I bring to family life. This is more… tense activities coordinator at a slightly underfunded summer camp. Functional. Efficient. A little bit haunted.
And when I get like this, all of life’s little pleasures begin to fall away.
I do not want to light candles.
I do not care about my outfit.
I am not slicing strawberries beautifully or creating atmosphere.
I am trying to get everyone through the day with their blood sugar and basic dignity intact.
I never really imagined I would find this part hard.
I think before I had children, or maybe before I had three children at three very different stages, I assumed that if you loved your kids enough then lots of time together would naturally feel wholesome and meaningful and fun.
And sometimes it does.
But sometimes it feels like being climbed on while answering questions and opening food items from the minute you wake up.
The truth is, I do want to spend time with my children.
I love them.
I love being with them.
But I am also overwhelmed by the relentlessness of being needed by three people at once, all day long, for different things, in different tones, with absolutely no radar for whether I myself have reached capacity.
The school week gives me enough space to reset.
Enough space to regulate myself.
Enough space to miss them a little.
Enough space to be pleased to see them at the end of the day instead of feeling like I have already completed a full emotional triathlon by 10:17am.
That structure matters more to me than I sometimes like to admit.
Because when the days are long, unstructured and full of snack requests, noise, negotiations, sibling politics, tiny emergencies and absolutely nowhere for my mind to land, I can feel myself becoming someone I do not especially enjoy being.
Less warm.
Less playful.
Less able to absorb everyone else’s needs without feeling like my own nervous system is trying to quietly exit through the side door.
And then when they are finally tucked up in bed, I feel guilty.
Guilty that I was short.
Guilty that I was counting down to bedtime.
Guilty that I was physically present but not always fully connected.
Which is always such a miserable combination, because by that point I also miss them a bit.
Motherhood really does have a gift for making you feel eleven things at once.
This is not how I want to live.
It is not how I want to parent.
And the annoying thing is, I know what helps.
I literally wrote just last week about being the emotional anchor of the home. I know that how I feel matters. I know that supporting myself changes the atmosphere of the whole house. I know all of this.
And still, I can find myself back here.
Running on fumes.
Powering through.
Eating chocolate in the kitchen with the energy of a woman in witness protection.
But the good news is that eventually I catch myself.
There is usually a moment, a pause, where I realise: ah. Here I am again.
White-knuckling.
Not enjoying anyone.
Not enjoying myself.
Acting as though the answer is simply to push through harder and hope for the best.
And that is usually the turning point.
Because I do not think we are here to learn something once and then perform it perfectly forever.
I think we are allowed to forget.
To drift.
To slip back into survival mode.
To lose the thread a little.
And then to notice, and come back.
That, to me, is the work.
Not perfection.
Just awareness, and return.
So as I head into the second week of the school holidays, I am leaning on the things I know help me feel like myself again.
A short burst of stretching when I wake up.
Getting outside every day, preferably for a walk.
Paying attention to what I actually need instead of automatically overriding it.
Sometimes an audiobook helps. Sometimes it is the final straw and I need silence before I start twitching.
Taking alone time where I can get it.
Going for a walk when my husband finishes work.
Meditating while the toddler naps, even if the older two are on screens and nobody is making a core childhood memory for half an hour.
The familiar things that help my nervous system remember that I am safe.
Because I am learning, over and over again, that connected parenting does not usually return because I try harder.
It returns when I support myself properly.
So this is my reminder this week:
If you have found yourself white-knuckling your way through parenting a bit, it does not mean you are doing motherhood badly.
It might just mean you need something too.
And often, that is where the shift begins.
A question to take with you today:
What helps you come back to yourself when family life starts to feel relentless?
Leave comments below for inspo (for me & others).
Until Next Time,
Lou
We went on a cruise last week. 7 days of beautiful sunshine and water and new places. More than once a day, I felt exhausted by it all and yet simultaneously so grateful. Motherhood.
Lovely words Lou and v relatable (although I only have 1 to contend with, but I’m writing this from the bottom bunk and they’re still not asleep at 9.40pm 🫠)