“Why are you on your phone – again?” my younger son asked with an edge of whine in his voice from the bathtub.

I felt a pang of guilt. I should be paying attention to him – right? My undivided, unquestioned attention.

But wait. I had given him a ton of attention earlier that day. We had played a board gamebefore dinner. I had just played a game of 20 Questions with him focusing on Dungeons and Dragons monsters while he was in the bath. No, I shouldn’t feel guilty. I needed that break.

“Because my brain needs a break. I find being a good listener takes a lot of energy. Reading gives my brain a rest. So I’m just reading on my phone for a little while,” I responded.

He grumbled and started telling me something anyway, but at least I tried.

I used to believe that whenever my kids were awake and I wasn’t working, I needed to pay undivided attention to them. I (sorry to say) was kind of judgy of parents being on their phone too much. It wasn’t until I hit burnout that I realized how much energy that took out of me. I was draining myself past empty over and over again.

As I explored ways to recover, I realized that reading was one of my favorite and most renewing ways to rest. In addition to getting much more in the habit of reading books again, I read on my phone. Sometimes it’s sci-fi short stories or thoughtful political essays and sometimes it’s scrolling Facebook. I’m doing it to rest, so I’m trying very hard not to judge myself for whatever I read. Getting out and taking a daily walk in our neighborhood is another big coping mechanism. 

Besides for our own sake, it’s important to model taking rest and play for our kids. Children have less and less free time and schools are focusing on academics earlier and earlier. Showing that you value rest as a family will help build a foundation to a healthy relationship with work as they grow into adulthood. I know I often don’t rest because I don’t like admitting my limits or asking for help. Some kids hide or deny when something is wrong out of anxiety (even if they would never get in trouble for it). Admitting our own vulnerabilities and limits can help these kids see that it’s okay to acknowledge theirs too.

Modeling that we all take rest in different ways is a good lesson too. Ever since he was a kid, my husband has found rest in video. (He even had a TVasaurus sticker with a TV-watching dinosaur on his childhood bedroom door.) While sometimes it annoys me, I also *get it.* For kids and adults who are neurodivergent, it’s even more important to find what works. The world is that much harder to function in if your brain doesn’t match the average. You need to be able to rest in the way you need. Personally, I find traditional meditation boring to the point of it being painful. But walking meditation where I open my senses up rather than blocking them is enjoyable and effective.

It’s also important that kids see their parents rest. Society puts such pressure on moms to be “on” all the time that we put those expectations on ourselves. Eventually, our kids tune into that and expect it. They feel entitled to all of our time and attention, even when we don’t have enough energy to give. We then end up wrung out and drained.

In addition, kids bring those models – especially the gendered aspect – with them into adulthood. If girls always see their moms sacrifice themselves without rest, they’ll remember that as grown women. If boys see it, then if they are in a heterosexual relationship, they may think that they can rest but their partner shouldn’t. In a two-parent household, for both parents to rest, they need to share the mental and physical labor of childcare and household tasks. (Ashia Ray has brilliant things to say about that in their Raising Luminaries podcast episode How to Have It All and Destroy the World.) So you can model fair sharing of both rest and work.

Rest is hard to come by in our hyper-capitalist society. Long, uninterrupted periods of rest are often not viable for parents of young children, single parents, or parents of disabled kids who need more support. But it’s important to grab it when we can. And sometimes that’s looking at our phone when our kid is in the bathtub.