Let’s Hear it for Mombrain

Let’s hear it for mombrain! 🎉

But first, let’s go over what we shouldn’t hear about “mombrain”: “Oh! Sorry, I forgot to sign that permission slip #mombrain.” “My bad, slipped my mind to stop at the store to pick up milk #mombrain.” “We made it to soccer practice, but don’t have our cleats #mombrain.” No, full stop!!

Mombrain is not something to apologize for— it is to be celebrated and revered thoroughly and often. After all, it is the mind that manages 3 meals and endless snacks every day for a whole gaggle of people, clothes, bodily cleanliness, home cleanliness, permission slips, camp enrollments that start before summer has even ended, extra curricular schedules, enrichment class transportation, playdates, presents for birthday parties, appointments, a job (in or out of the home and often both)—and all this often before 3 pm and then well into the night, all while making everyone around feel seen, heard and loved. That’s the mombrain I marvel at (although not nearly often enough, hence this post and reminder to us all).

To be clear, mombrain can just as well be dadbrain (as I know many dads, including my husband, who manage much of what is listed above) or parentbrain. None of these tasks are by definition mom-only tasks and if we’re lucky we are in a family where we can all play to our strengths and do our part. For the sake of this post and because I come at life from a mom perspective, we’re going to stick to the term mombrain.

What is top of mind that your parent brain takes care of? Write me a note or share in comments.

So, what do I mean by let’s “celebrate” mombrain? Sticking to my blogging promise of “Real Talk About All the Things” a big part of “celebrating” is uncovering and acknowledging the range and depth of tasks a parent’s brain manages that often go unmentioned or unrecognized or that are brushed off as being NBD as we try to publicly convey “I got this.”

Here’s a little taste of parent responsibilities that are often tasks “done on the side” of a job whether that job is full-time employment or running a home and household while caring for children. These consume mindshare, eat up time, and often require complex puzzle solving and clockwork-like coordination and precision.

Let’s start with the heavy hitters:

Let’s start with planning camp. Maybe the most taxing of all, camp registration can start as early as the prior summer when the camps you attended try to lock you in for the next year with attractive discounts you’ll never see again. In any case, full-fledged camp planning takes off in January/February and requires finding camps that are geographically convenient enough, align with your kids’ interests, have one or more friends attending, that have work-friendly hours, and will keep your kid happy and safe throughout the summer. Oh, and if you have multiple kids who don’t all want to go to gymnastics camp, good luck figuring out that drop-off and pick-up schedule!

Anyone else have a detailed camp spreadsheet they populate and share around each year. Raise your hand in the comments!

Up next, wardrobe. In case the mental gymnastics of keeping up your own wardrobe isn’t enough of a task, kid wardrobes need to have the right clothes in the right sizes in the right seasons. To be fair, I will say this is way easier with my son who only wears Nike dri-fit clothing and Gap Fit sweatpants. His wardrobe is entirely mix and match— all gray, blue, black, and white— and if I branch out beyond his self-proclaimed “uniform” he doesn’t wear it so I basically just keep buying him the same few items in different sizes. For my daughter, however, if she has the right shoes, tights, skirts, sweater and jacket for an outfit and every item fits at the same time I pretty much feel like I’ve hit pinnacle mom mode. Anyway, the shopping and keeping up with the sizes and seasons is no trivial task. I highly recommend finding yourself a good hand-me-down friend if you can.

Let’s not forget life sustaining food. Meal planning, groceries, cooking, cleaning, snacking, and more snacking seems to be a round-the-clock consumer of mombrain mindshare. In our family we’ve found some efficiencies— like full meal planning and once a week grocery shopping on a weeknight so it doesn’t interrupt our weekends. I will also admit that my husband pretty much owns this part of our life and I could not be more grateful (or well fed) and if anyone wants to talk Half Baked Harvest recipes with him, he’s here for it.

Let’s rattle off a few more expected and unexpected mombrain siphons. Perhaps the tasks that take up the most mindshare are the ones that constantly pop up both expectedly and unexpectedly. Birthday parties— we love them and maybe giving a go-to gift to everyone would give this mombrain a break, but this mombrain likes to give with intention so individually selected gifts it is! School forms, events, reading logs, special schedules, theme days, volunteer opportunities. Again, usually all wonderful things and also so much coming at us all at once. Then there’s the seasonal stuff. Are we Halloween ready? Do we have the right clothes that fit for holiday gatherings? What are our New Year’s plans? What trips are we planning for breaks (that’s a biggie that probably merits its own category, but again my husband does most of that so I’ll just shout out the amazing dadbrain that takes care of that for now). And I also want to mention that this is all stuff that needs to happen when things are going well. Short and long-term illnesses, family challenges, social-emotional, behavioral, developmental, and academic needs all add in deep levels of complexity.

All’s this is to say that don’t ever feel bad about your mombrain. It is a force to be reckoned with that keeps so many lives moving and thriving. Make sure to take the time to recognize and appreciate your own accomplishments big and small and don’t forget to cheer on others around you who are also doing all the things— maybe even in high heels.