He didn't even know where the dog food was.
The moment I realized I was complicit in my own overwhelm as the default parent...
I’ve been thinking so much lately—and by lately, I mean pretty much since school was back in session—about just how much I manage for my family.
I am the default for everything.
I’ll give you an example: there was this moment... it was maybe six months after we got the puppy. I wasn’t home to feed him dinner, and I had this realization that I had to remember the dog needed to be fed. So I called my husband and asked him to feed him.
And I had to explain to him not just how much food to give the dog, but where the food was.
He didn’t even know where we kept the food.
And I want to be so clear about this: that wasn’t his fault. It didn’t mean he is lazy or unwilling. It was a direct, logical outcome of me allowing the responsibility for this new living thing to fall entirely to me. I had just... let myself become the default.
The outcome, now that we’ve been working on this? He knows where the food is. He knows how much to feed him. It’s easy to just ask for help on nights when I’m not going to be home; we easily shift gears and he jumps in. This was never about his unwillingness, but entirely about my tendency to become the point person for everything.
That moment was just a classic, perfect example of how the default just... falls to all of us as moms. It was yet another responsibility that got added onto everything else I’m already managing.
For years, my way of dealing with this was to make excuses for everyone. I’d tell myself it was just quicker or easier if I did it. Or that, you know, they’re just kids and they’re already so busy. I was caught in that trap of trying to find the “right” system, the right chore chart, thinking I could somehow routine my way out of the overwhelm.
And I’ve been making those excuses for a long time. Until the resentment starts to build.
For me, I’m learning that when that resentment builds, it’s usually my sign that a change needs to happen.
It finally clicked for me that the problem isn’t just the stuff. It’s not the surface-level tasks. The real problem is the fact that I’ve been complicit in defining my role as the person who does all the things. It was a coping mechanism that got me pretty far for a long time... until it just didn’t.
And it’s what helped me finally realize that the real change wasn’t going to come from a better system or chore chart. It was realizing I had to stop being the “doer” and redefine my role as the “facilitator.”
And now, with my kids at 9 and 11, I’m trying to live that. I’m really trying to hold myself accountable, to prepare them to be excellent partners someday, to teach them how to contribute equally.
And I’ll be honest, we are in the real messy middle of it.
It’s uncomfortable…for everyone. And it’s taking a lot of time and energy from me to navigate it. A lot of times it feels like it’s taking more time than if I just did it myself. It’s taking more emotional bandwidth than I feel like I have to give some days.
But this is the new focus. It’s a process. It’s a passing of the torch. Some days we’re really on as a team, and other days we are really not on the same page at all. And that’s okay.
This is the permission slip I’m giving myself: to let it be imperfect. To let it be clunky. To trade the short-term “efficiency” of me just doing it for the long-term, foundational change of them learning to do it for themselves.
And in the space that’s opening up—the time I’m not using to manage every single detail—that’s the time I’m finding to sit here & think, and to write this to you. It’s an intentional trade.
So if you’re going through your day & starting to feel even a little bit resentful about how much you’re doing, I’m just here to say that it’s normal. And you’re not alone in feeling it.
My thought is just... before you ever start to think of the solution, maybe just take some time to observe. Just get curious.
What’s one thing in your household that’s on your plate, not because it has to be, but just because it... always has been?
Okay, talk soon…
Erin