The Mental Load of Raising Teens Has Me Running on Empty

I pressed the ignition in my car at 6:45 a.m. to take my daughter to her high school for a club meeting before school.

I felt my hands clench tightly around the steering wheel, admonishing myself for not remembering to get gas on the way home late last night from my other daughter’s soccer game, the stress creeping into my already tight shoulders.

There was no time to fill up before getting her to school. Of course, we were already running late.

I said a little prayer that I had enough fuel to travel to her school and then to the nearest gas station a few miles away.

The orange warning light came on as I backed out of my driveway.

“You are almost out of gas!” it screamed at me.

No joke. Like I needed that reminder.

The mental load during the teen years is heavy

It was one of those weeks.

We had concerts to attend and soccer practices to get to and school projects to finish. My teens were stressed about finals, and one was struggling with her mental health while another was diagnosed with strep throat.

I had a huge work project to finish, and I needed to help my aging mom with some Medicare issues. My husband was out of town for meetings, and the washing machine broke. The house looked like a hurricane hit it, and the refrigerator only held a jar of salsa, a floppy piece of celery, and an empty milk container that one of my kids lovingly returned instead of throwing it out in the recycling.

It’s hard enough to remember all the things, but then on top of it, there’s the worrying.

It’s the academic pressures my teens feel from every direction while we try to avoid burnout. It’s the vape and drugs that are definitely in our kids’ schools, the fear of gun violence, and hoping their self-esteem doesn’t get crushed by social media.

It’s the requests I hear about for nude selfies, the rise of adolescent deaths by suicide, and the palpable loneliness my kids sometimes feel.

It’s tough decisions about dating, sleepovers, school trips and big city concerts and feeling like I’m sometimes the only parent setting boundaries and saying no.

It is exhausting trying to bite my tongue, choose my battles, and learn to let my daughters go a little bit more every day.

It’s trying to be the grown-up by ignoring snide remarks that I know aren’t about me, but yet my heart still hurts. Teen rejection is real.

It’s closing the door on messy rooms and accepting that sometimes I can’t fix their world, no matter how much I want to do precisely that.

It’s stressing about how fast the time is racing by and trying to consciously enjoy every last thing you get to do with your kid while they’re pushing you away at every juncture.

With all of this going on, I often find that I am mentally drained at the end of each day, and I collapse into my bed like I did in those early years when I was physically exhausted from caring for my little family.

Raising teenagers is exhausting–even when you know you have great kids.

I constantly run on fumes, hoping if I can just make it to the next place, do the next thing, I can possibly fill up my tank.

But life doesn’t work like that. Life doesn’t naturally fill up your tank. Sometimes you have to stop what you are doing and fill up, and I often forget.

Sigh.

If I had a fuel gauge on all aspects of my life right now, the warning light would be shining brightly.

Relationships: running on empty

Job performance: close to empty

Parenting: hanging-on-by-a-thread empty

Taking care of myself: dead empty

Like finding the nearest gas station, we have to seek out what makes us feel full, what makes us feel complete.

Self-care during this stage can’t just be a buzzword

Like any parent, my to-do list is full of cumbersome and mundane tasks that have to get done—calling the plumber about our clogged sink, following up on an insurance claim, finishing a report, taking my daughter to the dentist and my dog to the vet.

But it’s also full of choices we made as a family. Soccer tournaments, cross-country meets, orchestra concerts, and a bunch of other activities.

I say no when I can, outsource what I am able, but we are at the end of this parenting phase, and I want to be a part of all of it.

I thought I would be better at this balancing act now, but raising three teenagers has brought me to a next level of busy.

Someone always needs to be brought to school early or picked up late. There is always a project, a dance, an event, a big test, a game, a college visit, a meeting, a place I need to be.

And with all this big stuff to do come big emotions from my adolescents. Sometimes we are up late talking about an issue, or I lay in my bed early in the morning wondering what’s going on in those heads behind the closed doors down the hall.

Their teenage brains are developing, their bodies are developing, their personalities are developing, and it can be tough to manage the highs and lows that accompany that tremendous growth.

As we move from activity to activity and problem to problem, I try to find some downtime, I try to be in the moment, I try to remember to enjoy the little things.

But I never seem to complete anything before moving on to the next—a movie with my kids, a workout, a dinner with my husband, a book recommendation from a friend.

I seem to hit empty before finishing any of them and the mental load of raising teens gets heavier instead of lighter.

Finding balance while raising teenagers can be challenging

Most of the time, I relish in the frenetic pace of the life I created for my family of five. I run happily from here to there, bring a dozen cookies to a game, volunteering for an event, or offering to drive to wherever we are headed.

I somehow manage to keep my head above water by rotating what gets the most of my frazzled attention, always feeling like I could be giving just a little bit more, always believing it’s not my best.

Until I hit empty, and I no longer remember why I’m doing any of this in the first place.

As parents, we are the role models to teach our teens self-care

After dropping my daughter off, I hastily get gas; but instead of checking my phone like I usually do when I stop for a second, I sit in my car and listen to the song on the radio for a minute.

I decide to get a cup of coffee, and I drop off doughnuts to a friend whose son is sick.

I return a package that has sat in my car for the past month and feel accomplished.

I phone my mom and listen to her talk about her garden for a few minutes instead of complaining about my busyness.

And I breathe. It’s like I can almost feel my soul filling back up to the full line.

My to-do list is not getting shorter, and the mental load of raising teens is not getting easier, but I know my life will slow down soon as my teens get ready to fly the nest.

But running through life with my gas light on isn’t good for anyone. That’s not how I want my teens to see me live my life. Teaching them how to slow down and take care of myself is the greatest gift I can give them.

Life gets so hectic sometimes that we get used to running on empty. We are so accustomed to it that sometimes we don’t even see the warning light.

I know I didn’t. And I almost ran out of gas.

Take care of yourself today. You’ll be glad you did.

Are you in the thick of raising your tweens and teens? You may like this book by Whitney Fleming, the co-owner of Parenting Teens & Tweens: You’re Not a Failure: My Teen Doesn’t Like Me Either.