My Batteries, and the Gift of Self-Awareness

It took having 2 babies to realize that I need to recharge both my physical and mental "batteries" in order to function optimally.

It’s 8:30 am on a Sunday, and I just rushed the husband and 2 babies out of the door into the car for them to visit their yéye (grandpa)’s house. I came back into the house, sighed, and sat down at my computer with a cup of coffee my husband brewed for me first thing in the morning.

As always, the morning was rowdy and energetic with a 2 year old and an infant who just gained mobility.

I looked away for a split second and the infant had puked back some milk on the play mat, and the toddler was crouching in front of him running his truck through it. Realizing the mat is wet, he tried to wipe it away with his hand.

“It wet!” He exclaimed, as he then proceeded to rub his hand on random furniture. I rushed over to wipe the floor, the baby’s face, the toddler’s hand, his toy, and the random piece of furniture he had wiped his hand on when I noticed that there’s actually a bigger pool of vomit next to the infant. He must have deposited that batch as he spun around on his stomach. Now, it’s a battle between my mommy speed cleanup and the infant landing his hand in the vomit to splash it. All in a span of about 90 seconds. What a whirlwind.

Having been in the epicenter of chaos for a little over 2 years, I’ve come to realize that how I deal with situations, and how much they bother me seem to depend heavily on how much “battery” I have left. Initially, I thought my “battery” gauge had to do with how much rest I got, but overtime, I realized it isn’t just physical but also emotional. Sleep is great, but I also needed to get “recharged” emotionally in order to feel good and have the bandwidth to deal with the daily grind of babies.

The recharging could be in the future; I’m going out with a friend, or we have an event coming up, or we have a playdate. Or, like today, I knew my husband will be taking the kids for a few hours so I can do all the to-do’s I hadn’t been able to deal with for the past few days. The anticipation can help me feel much better.

Or I could’ve had a date with a friend or a relaxing few hours, or took a nice walk with one of the kids. What has surprised me is that recently, it doesn’t necessarily have to be “without the kids” that I get my emotional battery recharged. It could be spending quality time enjoying going out and playing with one of the kids, feeling the breeze, talking about airplanes, and picking up rocks. Watching my toddler run around and scream in glee over the wind almost swiping him off his feet for an hour or two is enough to recharge my psychological battery.

It can also be a hobby, like content creation, writing, photography, or taking a nice long walk (which has added benefit of being kid-friendly). Recently, if I’m able to get some me-only time thanks to my mother in law or babysitter coming to help, I take an hour or so walking through Target. I never thought walking through Target and buying baby food or toys was going to be my go-to self-date, but here we are.

When I’m almost out of juice, I can feel it. I feel prickly, and every small misstep feels like it’ll send me over the edge and into hysteria. I feel something burning inside, ticking, ticking, ticking, until I might explode. Just being able to recognize my short fuse and putting it into context of a battery has helped immensely with usually preventing the actual explosion.

“It’s ok,” I tell myself. “My battery is low and my fuze is about to blow.”

If my husband is around, I tell him that I’m about to blow or my battery is reaching a critical point, and he knows I need a few moments to myself. Usually, I go to the bathroom (when was the last time I sat down to pee?), scroll through my phone for a minute, maybe roll on the bed for a few minutes, and then I’m back in action.

If no one’s around, I take a deep breath, and tell myself that it’s my brain signals going haywire, I’m overwhelmed and overstimulated, and it’s all going to be ok. If the situation is safe, I’ll leave the screaming baby on the floor for a few seconds while I walk around the house taking deep breaths.

For a while, I thought this was a neurodivergent “me” thing, but I’ve recently realized that it’s actually fairly universal. Looking through this lens, I can see when my husband’s juice is running low, and he’s getting frustrated (I usually swipe the kids away from him and tell him to go take a minute or offer to take them on a walk).

I utilize this context with my toddler, too. When he’s being mischievous, having tantrums, or not making good decisions, I say “I see your good decision making pot is empty!” And I’ll take away some of the options that are “helping” him misbehave.

There are genuine creativity, curiosity, and toddler behaviors, and then there are genuine misbehaviors, and while I try to be cognizant that toddlers should be allowed to do things that are of inconvenience to us as long as they are developmentally appropriate, sometimes it’s just bad decision making and tantrums, so I draw the line and intervene.

A book I was recently reading, titled Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be, by Becky Kennedy (affiliate link!) reframed it for me this way: when the kids are overwhelmed, over-tired, hungry, or in any type of distress, we are doing them a disservice by allowing them to make decisions when their decision making capabilities have been impaired. They’re unable to regulate themselves, so it’s the kind thing to do to intervene and help them not make the choices that are detrimental to them.

Of course, in the future, they’ll need to be able to self regulate and make better choices on their own even under distress. But now, they’re learning, and we need to help them along, scaffolding and modeling appropriate decisions for them, giving them choices that are aligned with their developmental stages. And honestly, a lot of adults (myself included) still haven’t fully grasped this skill (otherwise I wouldn’t be sneaking my kids’ Halloween candy into my mouth right now).

They say that by the end of the day, even adults’ good decision making pots are running close to empty after a full day of self-control, and that’s why we end up ordering take-out even though we had the best of intentions to stick to a diet. So it’s only natural that our kids’ pots are also depleted, especially at the end of the day or after a new experience. Dealing with the toddler’s misbehaviors or sudden outpouring of emotions have become much easier since I began looking at the events through this context.

Since he’s turned 2 and can understand and communicate so many complex things, I hope we will soon be able to help provide language to express when his batteries are running low so that he can identify the feelings himself and begin to ask for help when he needs it. In the future, because he’ll have the vocabulary and awareness, I hope he and his brother will be able to self-regulate their physical and emotional batteries.

It’s something that has taken me birthing 2 children and 35 years of life to begin understanding. By beginning early, I hope this will be a gift that can change the trajectory of his life by helping him learn to identify how his body and brain are feeling. To be a young adult and know how to “recharge” both of his physical and emotional batteries before it’s too late and he loses control… now that’s a super power!

This post took me almost the whole entire day to write because I got distracted with so many chores, baby food making, and baby vomit clean-ups. But because I got to take some time to write and complete a piece, and I made a bunch of purees for the baby, my batteries are almost full! Now I’ll take a nice hot shower and wash my hair before the kids get home from their walk with their dad (I don’t even want to try to remember when the last time I washed my hair was…).

Toodles!

Hiroko