Who's Having the Crisis, Me or Them?

It's 4pm. Oil is popping in the pan. My almost-18-month-old is on my hip because five seconds ago she was screaming to be put down, and now she's screaming to be picked back up. My teenager is somewhere behind me, headphones in, and I'm mid-sentence about report cards and how video games are "over" the second school starts — while balancing a baby who might grab the pan handle if I turn my back for one second.

Somewhere in there, I stop and think: okay. Who's actually having the crisis right now? Her? Him? Or me?

The baby crisis

She wants my arms. She always wants my arms — until she's in them, and then she wants down. Then she's on the floor for one second before she wants up again. It's not logical, it's not personal, it's just where she's at developmentally. But logic doesn't matter much when you're holding a squirming toddler two feet from hot oil, with water on the floor because she spilled the dog's water bowl two minutes ago when she was crying to be held, trying to just get through cooking dinner without anyone getting hurt.

This is touched-out burnout. No hands free. No five minutes where your body belongs to you. Even the bathroom isn't private anymore — she's on my lap for that too.

The teenager crisis

Then there's him. Moody. Glued to his phone. The second I bring up grades or screen time, I become the annoying mom — the one raising her voice, the one who "doesn't get it." I know some of this is just what fifteen looks like. I know he's supposed to be pulling away a little. That doesn't make it sting less when I catch myself mid-lecture and realize I sound exactly like every mom I swore I'd never sound like.

This is a different kind of burnout. It's not physical — it's the ache of watching a kid you used to carry on your hip now barely look up from a screen when you talk to him.

The guilt loop

Here's the part nobody warns you about: it's not just that both of these things are happening. It's that they make you doubt yourself in opposite directions, back to back, sometimes in the same five minutes.

Am I failing him because she takes up all my attention lately? Am I failing her because I feel my patience running out and I don't even know why she's crying this time? Is anything actually getting done around the house, or is it just diapers, dishes, and "not now, buddy" on repeat?

You want to cry. But you don't have time to cry. So you just keep moving, keep cooking, keep holding, keep reminding him about homework — and somewhere under all of it, the burnout just sits there, unresolved, because there's no room to unpack it.

So — who's having the crisis?

Maybe it's her, because a toddler's whole world is too big for her tiny nervous system to regulate yet. Maybe it's him, because being fifteen is its own kind of chaos even when it looks like silence and a phone screen. Or maybe — probably — it's me. Not a dramatic, one-time crisis. Just the slow-burn kind. The kind that comes from a nervous system with nothing left to give, still expected to give more.

I don't have a neat ending for this one. I wish I could tell you I found the trick, the routine, the sentence that fixes it. I haven't. Some days I get it right. Some days I snap at both of them within the same hour and feel like garbage about it by bedtime.

What I do know is this: naming it helped. Saying out loud that I'm touched-out and pulled-thin and worried I'm failing both of my kids in different directions — that took some of the weight off, even if it didn't take the weight away.

If you're in it too — baby on your hip, teenager rolling his eyes, dinner burning, patience gone — you're not doing it wrong. You're just doing all of it, all at once, with nothing left over. That's not failure. That's just what this season looks like.

☕ Some days the coffee's cold before I even take the first sip. This is real mom life, no filter.