🫠First of all, tell me the silliest mental labor you’ve been asked to do for your family in the comments (I’ll go first: someone holding garbage and asking me “where do I put this” while standing next to a trash can)
🙋🏻♂️Many default carers, particularly those who are women or were socialized as women, take on the majority of the mental load. This extends beyond knowing how much milk is in the fridge and often becomes being the “go to” person for knowing whether a room is clean, if a toilet is in need of a scrub, and where all things “live”.
😩The problem is then that person becomes the “air traffic controller” and no one can do their own mental labor independently.
🤯Recently I saw @samkelly_world on IG share the idea of practicing having your kids “notice” things about a room in order to identify what things need to be done
🔥I’ve been trying it and it’s been a game changer.
🤔But it also made me pause and think: wait, kids are able to handle mental load for things they CARE about. People who play complex games can keep a mental inventory, they know which objectives to complete first, they know which ability to use in what order, etc. That’s all complex and requires a lot of thought.
💪🏼The good news is, we can transfer this skill to real life!
👉🏻Next time you see a room in disarray, get everyone to pause, look at the room, and ask “what do you notice [that is out of place/that needs to be put away/that we don’t need/that is yours/that belongs in another room, etc.]”
🧠Everyone says one thing and then we ask them what needs to be done with the thing they notice. Maybe it gets thrown away, put away, moved, etc.
👏🏻Then everyone does the thing they noticed and takes care of it.
🙌🏻Soon, you’ll be able to say “hey, take a look at your room and notice if anything needs to be put away”.
🤯Remember, mental load and domestic labor are skills. They are taught. We aren’t innately better at them, and that means our kids can gain the skill of mental load and domestic labor too
