The Emotional Seasons of Motherhood: The invisible load years—preschool + elementary age

No more diapers, thank goodness!  The kids are in school all day or at least part of the day.  Everyone tells you to enjoy it, and you do, but then you find other ways to fill your time.  You join the PTA, volunteer in the classroom, become the mom that is the best at party planning.  Motherhood looks easier from the outside—but internally, the mental load explodes.  This season is less physically demanding and far more mentally and emotionally demanding.  With the extra space, it is so hard as mothers to prioritize yourself, your goals, your career, your hobbies or desires because you have spent years setting this aside. 

Welcome to what I call The Invisible Load Years. Just because your children are more independent does not mean motherhood became lighter.  Truly the expectations to be involved are endless.  And you will cherish those times you do volunteer in the classroom or you help organize an event; you will look at back at it and be glad you did, but you also are entering yet another season where you consider a new set of boundaries for yourself and your family.  Time you spend volunteering in the classroom takes away from time you usually spend in the gym, or time you spend having quality time with your younger child in the afternoons.  Time you spend in PTA meetings you may start to resent because it takes you away from the little family time you get after your older gets home from a long school day.  The demands of the PTA or the organization you begin to volunteer with take up mental space, the expectations in that role feel unrelenting. 

Your calendar is now full. You become a chauffeur to one, and another is along for the ride, you struggle to manage activities for both.

Amidst The Invisible Load years, the work doesn’t disappear, it changes.  When your children were younger the demands were obvious.  The diapers.  The sleepless nights. The tantrums. The constant supervision.  People could see the work.  They could see your exhaustion.  But now? Much of your labor becomes invisible.  You are no longer simply caring for the physical needs of children.

You are managing lives.  You are tracking: school calendars, teacher communication, doctor appointments, extracurricular activities, emotional struggles, friendship dynamics, behavioral concerns, developmental milestones, family schedules, household logistics.  And you are often doing it while managing your own work, marriage, responsibilities, and mental health.  The workload didn’t disappear.  It simply moved inside your head.

Why do so many mothers take on extra roles when their children start school, when they have a couple hours to themselves?  Fear of judgement?  Someone may ask you what you do with all your free time.  Missing your kids?  The desire truly comes from a good place.  So often keeping ourselves busy as moms, jumping into the next thing comes from a masochistic drive, finding pleasure in pain.  It sounds crazy.  But truly.  After years of caring for our kids’ physical needs, after birthing them, one way that we learn to sustain ourselves is by latching on to this masochistic attempt to care for ourselves.  So much is hard and painful and of course we long to find some goodness in the midst of it.  Alternately, we seek other outlets to fill our time because we have lost parts of ourselves.  Our identity.  It feels too hard to remember what we used to enjoy.  It is too hard to rebuild our career driven self.  It becomes easier to justify that our kids need us.  But do they?  And at what cost?  So many mothers in my office become LOST in motherhood.  It is so hard to find their way out.  And mothers are usually resentful when I suggest it.  Mothers are resentful when anyone suggests it. 

The mental tabs in this season never close.  Many mothers in this season describe feeling like they have fifty browser tabs open at all times.  You are packing lunches while remembering picture day.  Scheduling dentist appointments while responding to teacher emails.  Buying groceries while thinking about your child’s reading level.  Helping with homework while mentally planning dinner.  Even when your resting, your brain is often still working.  It can be hard to sleep and get that rest that your body really needs.  And then how do you start over again in the morning?  How does your nervous system ever get a reset? This is what makes the invisible load so exhausting.  The work rarely ends. 

Emotional Management Becomes a Full-Time Job

Elementary-aged children enter a world that is emotionally complex. Friendships become more meaningful. Comparison begins. Self-esteem begins develops. Anxiety often emerges. Social struggles become more nuanced. Questions become deeper. Children may no longer need constant physical care. But they need increasing emotional guidance.  My daughter was in kindergarten and it was the first or second day when she complained of a boy at school making fun of her.  I don’t even remember what this little boy said that bothered her, but the point is, it was a neutral observation, to me it seemed incredibly benign, but it brought her to tears when she finally worked up the courage to tell me.  My sweet little girl had been holding this distress inside of her all day.  How I responded to her did matter.  And the teasing continued from other kids.  And comments were made by her peers that made my daughter question her hair color, her face shape, her waist size, her height, the way she talked, the way she walked, the way she sang during class to help keep her focused.  And this all started in Kindergarten.  How I responded to her mattered and it is difficult to respond in a supportive, empathic way when the comments feel benign, and her little brother is screaming at me from the other room distressed by a transition or needing help wiping his bottom.  I see you mama. 

Mothers take on roles such as: coaches, counselors, mediators, encouragers, and emotional translators as you’re helping children make sense of a world they are just beginning to understand. And that emotional labor is significant.  Alongside the pressure we put on ourselves to get it right.

The Pressure to Do Everything Well

This stage brings a new kind of pressure. The pressure to optimize. To raise kind, confident, resilient, and successful children. Confident children.  We want emotionally healthy children, children who thrive socially and academically, who love Jesus and make good choices.  These are good desires.  And you don’t have to get it right 100% of the time for this to happen, that is far too heavy of a burden to carry.  Not every parenting decision you make will determine your child’s future.  It is the sum total of these parenting decisions.

Managing and supporting multiple developmental stages means that sometimes one will need you more than the other.  Sometimes I feel like my older daughter’s emotional needs are never fully supported.  That is a burden and pressure I am putting on myself there with this all or nothing language.  My older daughter’s emotional needs sometimes are not supported wholeheartedly.  Sometimes I do show up for her.  Sometimes I circle back and apologize for the time I had to run to help her brother get his shoes tied and manage his frustration for not being able to do it himself.  I can say to her, “that wasn’t fair.  You needed me and I’m sorry.  Your brother also needed me.  I also can see that you figured out how to get through that moment.  Can we talk about it now?”  Sometimes we don’t show up for our kids right away.  Sometimes we forget to show up for them or we legitimately can’t.  Helping them see that they can survive through those moments builds resilience and character.  And it is not about the times we don’t show up, it is about the times that we do.

So Many Mothers Feel Lost During This Season

You have spent YEARS caring for everyone else and as the emotional manager of the family. Somewhere along the way, maybe you realize that you have lost touch with yourself. You can easily answer questions about your child’s favorite food, their best friend, their teacher, their schedule….but what do you enjoy?  What do you need?  What brings you life?  The answers to questions about you feels so hard to reach.  There is nothing wrong with you, but caregiving has consumed so much space. 

Enter the Loneliness Nobody Talks About

You may be surrounded by people all day.

But you still feel disconnected.

You volunteer at school, attend sports practices, participate in church activities, interact with other parents…. but it all is primarily small talk.  And you still feel disconnected. So much of what mothers carry during this season remains unseen. Many women feel responsible for holding everyone together while quietly wondering who is helping hold them.

This year while my daughter was at church Tuesday nights I gave myself the luxury of participating in a women’s bible study that happened at the same time.  Half the hour I sat just taking in the calm, the small talk surrounded me at times, and other times we went a bit deeper.  I was able to connect to myself again, a bit deeper to my relationship with God, and even with these women.  The group ended and I felt a bit more grounded.  I don’t know if these relationships will continue, but I don’t think that is the point.  I courageously took the opportunity (and believe me there were LOTS of vulnerabilities in the way: who would watch my younger son, I was the only one in the group with young kids, sometimes I didn’t feel like going, etc. etc.) and proved to myself that I deeper type of grounding in myself, my needs, and my faith was possible.  Where do you need to step out and risk and feel this same type of grounding? 

Christian Mothers and the Weight of Responsibility

You want your children to know God, to make wise choices, reflect the image of God, develop a strong character, to grow in their faith. Those desires are beautiful.  And your children feel the pressure and they don’t like it.  God is a welcoming, inviting patient God.  Of course, God wants your child to have a long relationship with Him, but like the father in the Story of the Prodigal Son, He will rejoice when you child comes running into His arms.  He praised Mary for sitting at his feet instead of busying herself with preparations like Martha.  Be Still and know that He is God and He has a plan. 

Sometimes our GOOD desires for our children can become intertwined with fear; fear of getting it wrong, fear of not doing enough, fear that your child’s struggles somehow reflect your shortcomings. The truth is this: You can faithfully parent your children without controlling every outcome.  Each of them is born with a unique temperament, personality, birth order, sensitivity, gender.  There are SO dynamics involved in who you child becomes.  God already knows the story and He understands the bigger picture of who your child is becoming. Your job is not to guarantee perfection. Your job is to faithfully show up.

What Mothers Need During The Invisible Load Years

Not more pressure. Not more comparison. Seriously! It never ends, and the way we compare our kids is rubbing off on them.  Some kids like sports and some like art.  Some like meeting all the friends and some like just having their close 2 or 3 nearby.  Not another parenting expert telling them all the ways they’re falling short. What mothers often need is: support, friendship, rest, boundaries, encouragement, space to process their own emotions, permission to be a whole person, not just a caregiver

If YOU Identify with carrying the Invisible Load

Maybe you remember everyone else’s schedule but forget your own. You are answering emails, packing lunches, coordinating activities, and carrying everyone’s emotional world. You constantly feel exhausted despite everyone telling her this stage should be easier.  I see you. Just because it’s invisible, it doesn’t mean it’s not heavy.  The load you are carrying is real.

Motherhood was never meant to require the complete disappearance of the mother. You matter too. Your needs matter. Your emotional health matters. Your relationships matter. Your healing matters. And while you continue carrying so much for the people you love, I hope you remember this: You do not have to carry everything alone. The invisible load becomes lighter when it is shared. And you deserve support too.

Grace for the journey, healing at the root.