I Hate The Mom I Become Over The Summer

If you were to ask me if I’m a good mom, I’d say yes. I’m loving, attentive, affectionate, and I say yes to most any idea my kid has as long as it isn’t dangerous. Sure, you can go outside and play in the water hose in your pajamas; I’m just happy you want to play outside. But if you ask me that same question over the summer? I’d waver. Because honestly, being a mom over the summer turns me into a barely-contained bitch.

When I decided to have a baby, I doubt I’d ever heard the word overstimulated before. In fact, it took barely surviving a year’s worth of sleepless nights and getting into the toddler years before I started really feeling its effects. I remember standing at the stove cooking a dinner no one in the house would be excited to eat while my dog scratched at the back door to be let back in and my two-year-old dragged a toy pirate ship across the sandy tile floor to tell me he was hungry now. The sounds, the demands, the urgency of it all made me want to run screaming from the house and never look back.

That’s when I realized the irritation I felt welling up all day — that I was usually up to my eyeballs in by dinnertime — was the result of overstimulation. Every new request, touch, or bid for attention felt instead like a psychic shove against a brick wall, my nervous system in tatters from the incessant sounds and big feelings that come with having a small child in the house.

Daycare was a major help at this time; it allowed me enough time and space to work without also balancing caring for my son, and it built in some quiet to my day — a long, deep breath I could count on that allowed me to keep my irritation in check. Now that my son is 5 and in actual school, that union-mandated nervous system break gets ripped away for roughly 80 days each summer, and I am trying my best not to make that everyone’s problem.

This summer, we decided to keep my son at home. He’s very shy and anxious and would not do well going to a new camp every week or two. Plus, we are focusing on paying down debt this year, and summer childcare is notoriously expensive. For anyone else who is in it right now, let me just say this: Parenting while working from home is not easy. Some days I swear it literally feels like my brain is overheating. I’d give anything to pop it out and plunk it into a glass of water, like dentures on a bedside table.

Because oh my god, kids this age never shut up.

I’ve considered a hundred ways to kindly explain to mine that not every single thought he has must be spoken aloud, that I don’t need to look every time he adds one additional magnetic tile to the zoo he’s building, and that he won’t die if he isn’t constantly emitting a hum, raspberry, or other repetitive noise of some kind. Unfortunately I haven’t yet landed on one that won’t hurt his feelings. Instead, “Buddy, I love you, but I can’t respond to every single thought you have while I’m trying to work” is a refrain he hears a lot right now.

Even complaining about that feels gross and mean. He’s 5! This is all developmentally normal and healthy and good! I want him to tell me when he needs something or accomplishes something cool. But when I’m just trying to sit through a meeting and he thinks that’s the time to snicker and launch hard plastic Pokémon figures at me from just out of the Zoom frame, yes, I want to snatch up the nearest throw pillow and throttle him with it. If my group chat is any indication, I’m not the only mom who feels this way right now.

More often than not, our weekdays end with us having had some sort of fight; he’s old enough now that he can pick up on my exasperation, which is unfair and rightfully frustrates him. And now, I lose even more energy to policing my own tone and annoyed sighs before they slip out and do any damage.

These days don’t happen in a vacuum, no — they happen against a backdrop of Instagram videos reminding me I only get 18 summers with him, and that making core memories is as easy as, say, having a picnic dinner on the front lawn once a week. Being a good mom is free and low-lift they imply, while being a grumpy, tired mom costs you one of your precious 18 summers under the same roof.

Meanwhile, I am desperately trying to do my job and make ends meet so we can afford all the f*cking popsicles I’m supposed to feed him on the front porch so we can ~have a ‘90s summer.~

There’s no real solution to this problem, unfortunately. School lets out in the summer; work does not. Camps remain exorbitantly expensive; salaries in industries nationwide remain stagnant. Those of us lucky enough to work from home at least have the ability to care for our kids without the added financial burden of paying for daycare or camps, but the mental toll is very much real.

Personally, I’m just trying to bite my tongue a lot and take the impending migraines in stride.