“You should be so available to play that your children never need to ask,” read the meme. Or least that’s how I read it. (Although it really was close to it.) But what if they always want more than I have to offer? I thought in desperation.

Other memes or oversimplified advice extolled the virtues of connection, especially when it came to getting your kids to do what you want or need them to do, like brush their teeth or come to the table for dinner. Some even made the connection explicit, saying that your kids will be cooperative if only you’re connected enough with them. Of course that message implies the opposite – that if they aren’t cooperative, it’s because you aren’t connected enough.

Whenever I read these memes, I thought, “But that doesn’t apply to my kids, right? They have challenges with executive function and impulse control. They want to cooperate – their brains just don’t always cooperate with their own desires. We’re plenty connected – right?”

But so often, the doubt would creep in. Maybe it really is me after all? Maybe our struggles would just disappear if we were more connected?

Not that I needed memes to make me feel guilty. I had the sometimes nagging, sometimes overwhelming feeling that I wasn’t spending enough time with the kids ever since I went back to work when they were babies. I didn’t mind going back to work – I found being at home with an infant mind-numbing. Plus, I find great meaning in my day job.

But no matter what, I always felt like I *owed* my kids more time. My husband was a stay-at-home dad, so I felt like the fact that I wasn’t available the way he was made me inferior as a parent.

I resolved to make every single moment at home count. I would never be busy or distracted. I would always be available to my children.

As the kids grew from being babies to toddlers to preschoolers, I let go of this idea a little. I attended my bike advocacy meetings once a month and went running on weekends. I even took a weekend away with my husband a couple times. But even then, I scheduled my runs and other time to myself around naps and screen time. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust my husband – I very much did. I didn’t trust myself. I didn’t trust that I was enough for the kids unless I was 100% available all of the time.

The kids tended to reinforce my feeling of not being enough. My younger son is a major extrovert and wants to be with people all of the time – especially me. Too often, I would come home from my run to hear him crying, having woken up from his nap and sad I wasn’t home. Or both kids would be especially wild after they stayed with my parents, even for just an afternoon. Every time, my breath caught in my throat and the guilt surged through me like electricity. So I’d resolve to do better next time – never quite being good enough.

For years, this was hard but doable. Then COVID hit.

Like so many things, COVID upended everything. For the first few months, it was weird and scary. We all hunkered down as a family, hiking at the local nature center, playing Dungeons and Dragons, and instituting a Saturday morning movie ritual. Once the worst of it died down, that first summer was pretty okay – especially because my parents took the kids on Friday evenings.

Once school restarted, virtual and hybrid school hit. That was really bad for reasons that I’m sure all parents understand. For us, it was especially difficult because while my husband was trying to get my older son to stay at his computer, my younger son would come talk to me about whatever popped into his mind – while I was working. For quite a while, it was altogether too much togetherness.

Then came last year. The kids were back at school in person, my husband was doing chores at home, and things were settling down to mostly fine.

But I wasn’t fine. I was exhausted all of the time, not just physically but emotionally. Drained. Burnt-out. Weirdly numb. Nothing left to give – to myself or anyone else.

Sure, it made sense to be tired when the kids were babies and toddlers and then COVID – but now? Why was I so damn tired now? Everything was going well. It was like hitting the wall when you’re almost done with the marathon or getting sick when you finally have a vacation day.

I realized that despite my “I need to be available 100%” attitude, I had more time to myself when the kids were younger, pre-COVID. As much as I disliked my hour-long commute, it provided some breathing room between work and home. Likewise, my lunchtime at work was for me to spend as I pleased – not be available to chat with my kids as I was during COVID or during the summer when they were home from school. I took those mental and emotional rest periods for granted. Now that I hadn’t had them for more than two years, I was painfully feeling the consequences. My kids deserved better. I deserved better.

As my office is now permanently remote (much appreciation for my boss, who pushed for it), it was clear that I needed to make that space for myself without my commute.

Part of that had to be setting some boundaries with the kids. Identifying what was so damn exhausting was the first big step.

Being a good listener to my children is both extremely important to me and at the same time, very, very hard. Due to a combination of brain wiring and an auditory processing delay (possibly also brain wiring), I’ve always struggled to listen well without interrupting. When my older son was younger, I tuned my brain to be able to listen to him despite long pauses. He truly taught me how to listen. This was a huge personal accomplishment – I was thrilled! What I didn’t take into account is that even though I can carry out this skill, it’s not easy. It still takes enormous amounts of mental and emotional energy to listen, especially while my kids are infodumping. So with both kids talking more than ever, there was a whole lot of listening going on.

In addition, having two people talk to me simultaneously makes my brain feel like it’s full of bees. Constant buzzing threatening to sting me. Instant overwhelm. With two kids who love to talk, want to talk to me, and often want to talk about different things and refuse to back down, this phenomena is pretty common. I also realized that having someone make the same noise or sound over and over and over again triggered a similar response.

Neither of these things would be so bad if I actually confronted them quickly. Instead, I would take it until I couldn’t anymore. Convinced that I could just handle it if I kept pushing through, I would keep pushing through until it broke me.

So I started to say no – even when I felt guilty about it. I started stepping away and putting my headphones on for a song when things started to get too much – even if I felt like I “should” be able to handle it. I started handing a kid off to my husband when my brain just couldn’t listen any more – even if I hated to do so.

And it started getting better. Each time I set those boundaries, I feel a little less guilty, a little less like a failure. In the meantime, the kids survived. They were healthy and felt loved and felt safe, despite my fears otherwise.

Most importantly, I started getting better. Less exhausted, less feeling like everything is a struggle, less constantly overwhelmed, less frustrated with myself and everyone else. More excited. More joyful. More me.

Things will be hard. They will be tiring. But they shouldn’t be All The Time. When they are, something is wrong – whether that’s outside circumstances like difficult medical situations or uncertain economic situations or internal ones like I was dealing with.

We all deserve to rest – even me. Even if I have to keep reminding myself of this point – even if I always have to remind myself of this point – it doesn’t make it less true.