Mom Of 6 Feels 'Absolutely Awful' After Forgetting Her Older Kids At School Weeks After Giving Birth But Gets Words Of Support From Other Parents
The mom shared her mistake, and other parents let her know that she's not alone.
Yuganov Konstantin / Shutterstock, Thirdman / Pexels A busy mom of 6 wrote into Reddit “needing a place to vent” because she felt like a “complete mess.” She explained her “really chaotic” situation on the r/parenting subreddit, noting that she had a baby three weeks ago, hence the feeling of chaos.
The mom was cleaning up the house when her husband called. He’d left work to pick up their older girls, aged 10, 8, and 6, from school. He asked her why there weren’t any other parents at the school for pick up, and then, they realized their mistake.
Their daughters had an early release day from school, and the stressed-out parents completely forgot to pick them up on time.
The mom said that her husband told their girls to play at the neighboring park if he was ever a little late, but he never intended to be as late as he was that day—45 minutes past pick-up.
The dad went to the office, only to find that his kids weren’t there. He then headed to the park, which is attached to the school, where he found them playing happily.
“I can’t believe we left them at school for 45 minutes,” the mom said. “I feel absolutely awful and I can’t stop crying.”
The other parents on the forum responded graciously, offering words of support and similar stories from their own lives.
“Being a parent is hard, and when you have a newborn in the mix it just gets harder,” noted one person. Another parent empathized with the mom’s guilt before pointing out the brighter side of having left the kids at school. “I understand that you want to be upset at yourself about this and if you want to, that's fine,” they said. "But there's a bigger thing here. Your kids did great in the face of adversity. You had given them instructions and they did exactly that.”
In truth, what this mom is dealing with is likely overwhelm, exhaustion and burnout and it has nothing to do with being a "bad mom."
As a mother of six kids, including a newborn, it is completely understandable that all these emotions came to a head after forgetting her kids' early release. According to Edna Massey, a therapist who creates content on TikTok, mom burnout is a very real and very challenging issue faced by overwhelmed mothers.
Massey explains that while burnout is generally considered to be a term used in the professional world, moms can experience their own unique feelings of burnout too.
She explains that burnout moms experience "high levels of exhaustion," "cynicism" and issues with efficacy and efficiency at work — though this may apply to the home also.
As Massey further explains, moms need to be honest with themselves about what they're feeling in order to prioritize their needs and not burnout even further.
"You need to take initiative to tune into yourself, build some self-awareness around how you're really feeling," says Massey, "The issue with moms is that they're always expending energy outside of themselves. That they don't take the initiative to take care of themselves."
"And so if you can learn some skills to manage your responsibilities or manage your stress levels or you can take some initiative to build some self-care, invest in some self-care for yourself, then things are going to be running smoothly because we all know if mama is not okay then nobody is. The whole system collapses."
Alexandra Blogier is a writer on YourTango's news and entertainment team. She covers celebrity gossip, pop culture analysis and all things to do with the entertainment industry.