A big shout out to ABC Radio Broken Hill for being a Stand for Children's Health. Each week, I will be chatting to Greta on air about food, family and children's health.
We've got loads of great topics we'll be covering. Most weeks, I will be on air live with Greta on Tuesdays at 10.40am. However, some weeks I may be on a different day if I'm running school incursions.
Here is this week's recording.
The Physical & Mental Load of Being a mum - 16th Mar
Greta:
Talking to physical and mental loads, what is the difference between the physical and mental? I mean we hear it a lot, don't we? But there
are some differences about mental load versus physical.
Bel:
One hundred percent. The mental load I guess you could describe, I call it the administration of family life. It's all the invisible labour that we do. You know, the things that we... worry about the planning, the organizing, they happening, what's after school the orthodontic appointment compared to It's all of that kind of I mean if a job and you're a project manager, it's matching up the timelines and making everything gets done when it needs to the mental load.
Greta:
Right. And in your opinion, who carries the mental load in the family a lot of the time?
Bel:
Great question. I mean, if you talk to a lot of the mums that I do, it's definitely a mum thing. But there's also been studies done that support this. I mean, there was a study by Bright Horizons and they found that 72% of mums feel like it's all of their job to stay on top of everything. And then 52% of them feel like they're actually facing burnouts from the weight of carrying all those responsibilities. There was another study that actually found that 9 out of 10 mums feel like it's their job to actually do it all. And I guess years ago, like I'm talking many years ago, it made sense that fell on the, you know, the mums' shoulders because... they quite often didn't have work and their partner would go off for work. These days, as we know, it's a very different situation. And it sounds like a lot of mums are still carrying both the physical and mental load on top of their workload. So very different situation.
Greta:
I'd have to agree with you. Do we know why this is?
Bel:
I think it's just... a couple of things. I mean, there's a lot of talk at the moment around patriarchy, like the things that we've picked up from our generation before us. I think the second thing is, and this is something I found out by cruel example of myself, perhaps we're a little bit of control freaks without realizing. So I mean, a real life example for me is I used to go away quite a lot from home for work to run my school incursions and I would rush around like a chook with my head chopped off trying to you know batch cook food put it in the freezer write the list you know everything so that my husband could make sure the kids were fed the way I wanted when I was away and then one weekend I had no time to do that we had to go away for a christening and when I got back I hadn't had time for that and I remember driving away that Sunday afternoon with tears streaming down my face because I hadn't left him anything. So goodness, he had to fend for himself. And to my surprise, when I got home, the kids were still alive. Yes. And he'd cooked stir fries. And when I looked at it, before there was kids involved, I had a corporate job and I would get home late and he used to cook for me all the time. But as soon as we had kids, I assumed that responsibility and almost liked I had pushed him out of the picture. So there's a tendency that we like to do it our way without realizing it as well.
Greta:
That's interesting to assume a lot of the responsibility without blaming too much, everybody has a hand in it. But do you think a lot of that controlling behavior that moms do, do you think it quite simply just comes from guilt?
Bel:
Like we weren't rushing around. And now all of a sudden, starting to change back and we're falling into, oh, we've got to do jujitsu as well as basketball and you know, then there's netball and all the stuff because we feel guilty that our kids need to have that because perhaps we didn't, you know, so there is that guilt thing that plays in and that we think that loving our kids means that they need all of that.
Greta:
Yeah and it’s the guilt of sort of if I haven’t done it, I’m letting everybody down, which sort of isn't logical. And I'm just speaking from experience about how my thought process goes. If the meals aren't prepared, if the cleaning isn't done, I've failed as a mother. That sort of feeling, the guilt comes from that.
Bel:
And it's our own expectation too. I interviewed a doctor recently, Dr. Gary Leong, who is a pediatric endocrinologist and diabetes specialist. And at the very end, I asked him a question I ask a lot of experts, which is, what's one bit of advice that you could give families? And he said, if the only thing you change right now is having quality time with your family where you sit and you play games and you have dialogue, then that's the best thing. that you could do. They don't need the $10,000 holiday. They don't need you rushing around making sure that dinner's on the table at the exact same time every night. They just need you to be there. So yes, there's that challenge of we set ourselves all these things and then when we don't meet all those things, we judge ourselves, but it doesn't really matter.
Greta:
No
Bel:
It's generally for the kids.
Greta:
And as you mentioned, you went away, you weren't able to do a few things and your husband stepped in. Kids survived. They were fed, they made it to their activities. What changed there? So you had a realisation.
Bel:
Oh, yeah, the realisation was that, you know what, it's really not all my job. And what could have been the worst thing that happened? I come home and he'd fed them pizza every night. Well, it's only really a week. It's not like it happens all the time. So just really having that realisation that perhaps I need to relinquish control and trust that the kids are going to be fine. That he'll either do the way that I do it, but even if he didn't do it the way I did it, that it was totally okay. So yeah, definitely that control and trust was the big thing.
Greta:
You've just reminded me of a memory from my childhood when my mother would go, very, very occasionally go for an overseas trip to visit family and we were left with my dad. He would show up at the school gates with... donuts and sausage rolls and chocolate milk. It's a really fond memory because it really, rarely happened.
Bel:
Yeah, exactly. And you know, I've got right now a picture of a washing basket. In fact, I had it on my very floor in my dining room on the weekend, two overflowing washing baskets plus shoes that I'd washed, two more for my son. And I looked at that basket and instantly putting all the physical and mental jobs together, okay, that needs to be folded, the best needs to be made, da da. And then the mental motor that was, okay, the best needs to be made by this time because I'm cooking a baked dinner, and then I need to get those shoes advertised on marketplace so I can get some money. And the combination of those two things is what gets us in a bit of a loop. So a real example of this is that we can add. Lists are great, right? But they can add a lot of clutter to our life as well. So in my Kids Health Quest membership, a mum actually, on one of our coaching calls, she said to me, I just don't have the headspace for everything. And so we started talking about the headspace and the mental load. And she spoke about a list that she had on the fridge of everything that she needed to do every day. And one of those things was get the kids' school shoes out and put them by the front door. And so, you know, my conversation with her was, how old are your children? Okay, so they're seven and nine. Can you not have a conversation with them about that actually being their job so that you can cross it off the list? Or even if you don't want them to do it, do you actually need to have it as another thing on the list? No. So that your list looks really long? So just giving ourselves that space.
Greta:
Yeah, and trust as you say because otherwise they could grow up as adults who move out and might be thinking, why is no one putting my shoes out for me in their first share house?
Bel:
Yeah, exactly. And this is actually very real. I was sitting in on a training call yesterday with a lady who specializes in advising people around household clutter. story or told the story of her life which was she had one of those amazing mums who rushed around, did everything, you know, that as kids they really didn't have to do anything and her mum saw that as love. But unfortunately her mother passed away when she was 18 and all of them were still living at home and she said that all of a sudden people were like, you know, like the dad, I don't know how to peel a carrot. And so, you know, when we do it all, we take on the physical and the mental load, but we're not actually helping or saving any of our kids. We're not setting them up for success in the future.
Greta:
Speaking to Belinda Smith, founder of the Root Cause about lightening the physical and mental loads of being a mother. Belinda, what are some of the actions we can take to lighten the physical load specifically?
Bel:
The first thing about the physical load is, and this probably applies to the mental load as well, is write it all down. What are all the things that you're currently doing? And then ask yourself the question, is it true that someone else in the household isn't capable of doing it?
Greta:
Oh, like the kids with the shoes, the school shoes.
Bel:
Yeah, perfect. And every time you say, no, that's got to be me, ask yourself, why does it need to be? can I not train someone else? So, you know, like I had this hilarious post that went crazy on Instagram and Facebook where I took a photo of my dishwasher and how my husband had packed it and this plastic tub sitting on top of the cutlery and in my head when I looked at it, I was like, that's not gonna clean, rattled off all the lists and nearly used the control for it, so I nearly repacked it, right? But you know. I thought what's the worst? Unpack and it not be washed and then I'd just have a conversation with him like, hey, I really appreciated you packing that but because that was stuck on top, none of the cutlery washed properly. So next time, that's how we train people. So you can lighten the physical load by relinquishing control, trusting that it will get done and then if it doesn't get done to a satisfactory kind of level or it creates more work, then you have a conversation about it. The conversations were so important.
Greta:
Right and onto the mental load now. Why is the mental load so draining? All the appointment keeping and the household administration as you say.
Bel:
It's really, it zaps our energy. Like if you talk to mums they'll say things like words like, it's the little things that bubble away in my mind in the middle of the night that keep me awake and They're all the little things of, you know, like what bill needs to be paid or, you know, what things do I need to put on the shopping list or if they don't get the right amount of nutrition, they're going to get sick. You know, all of those little things and it takes away from our sleep. It puts unnecessary stress on our body and without even realizing it, that mental mode is actually the thing that we take into pretty much everything that we do around the house and it's often the thing that leads to us feeling resentful. Like for instance, let's just say you divvy up the shopping and your partner goes off, like you've written the menu plan, you send your partner off shopping and then he rings every five minutes saying, what aisle is this in? You know? So even though you've lightened the physical load, what you haven't done is trained him up to deal with the mental load of being resilient to go looking or if you're looking for fruits and vegetables, meat, dairy, it's all around the edges. If you're looking for UHT milk, you go to aisle whatever, having that conversation, training and then setting it aside. And then if he calls, putting a boundary in place saying, why don't you just walk up and down the aisle? That's how I had to learn.
Greta:
Exactly. Exactly. So the conversations is something we can do to lighten the mental load. And are there any other, any other strategies we can put into place?
Bel:
Well, I think if I could give everyone five kind of five step process for both the physical and the mental load, it's just to really sit down and write a list of, I know I just said not have lists, but this one's really important, a list of everything, both physical and those. you know, the admin of life job that you do, write it all down, in the next column next to it write, you know, P or M, you know, physical, mental and tick which one it is and then actually start to look at, you know, that question of can I lighten the load, can someone else do this and then you have the conversation with them. You make an agreement like, okay, so... You know, like let's just say you decide that it's going to be your partner's job to look at all the appointments around after school activities, you know, making sure that's all lined up. Then you make an agreement that that's their job and then hands off the wheel, relinquish control and trust that your partner can actually get it sorted. And if you're doing this with someone else, like, you know, if maybe you're a solo parent. Maybe you have an agreement with a friend whose child also goes to the same class and it might be that you lighten the load and they do the ferrying around to those activities. And then the last thing is just to have a regular check-in. How's it going? Is it working? How can I support you? How can you support me? So just having those five steps. Write your list, share it with a conversation about this is what's really going on for me. I need to take some of this off my plate because otherwise I'm going to lose the plot. Make an agreement, step back and release control and trust that it will happen and then have a check in every now and again.
Greta:
Belinda, it's always fantastic advice that you give us and thank you so much for giving us this pointers for lightening the physical and mental loads. I look forward to the next topic.
Bel:
Thanks Greta, have an awesome day.
Greta:
Thanks Belinda.