Mum Words, Explained
All the things you've felt but maybe never had a word for. The quiet vocabulary of being a knackered, loving, overstimulated mum.
Touched Out
Being touched out is the overwhelmed, skin-crawling feeling that comes from constant physical contact all day, until you cannot bear one more person touching you.
Mum Rage
Mum rage is the sudden, white-hot anger that erupts over something small, usually followed by a heavy wave of guilt.
Parental Burnout
Parental burnout is a state of deep physical and emotional exhaustion caused by chronic parenting stress, which ordinary rest alone does not fix.
The Mental Load
The mental load is the invisible, never-ending work of remembering, planning and noticing everything a household and family needs.
Overstimulation
Overstimulation is when too much sensory input, such as constant noise, touch and mess, floods your senses with no quiet to recover in, until your nervous system hits its limit.
Emotional Labour
Emotional labour is the unseen work of managing everyone's feelings, needs and emotional comfort, on top of the practical tasks of running a family.
The Default Parent
The default parent is the one everything routes through: the parent asked for everything, who holds the whole plan even when someone else is nominally helping.
Weaponised Incompetence
Weaponised incompetence is doing a task so badly, or claiming you simply cannot do it, that the other person gives up and takes it over themselves.
Feral Era
A mum's feral era is the survival-mode stage of motherhood where you run on caffeine, dark humour and sheer will, and simply getting through the day counts as a win.
Felt all of these in one afternoon? Same.
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