Do You Have A ‘Mum-brain’?
Yesterday I had a great mum day.
Firstly my daughter walked straight into dog muck on her way to school and freaked out royally (not that I blame her seeing as some dog owner had left it slap bang in the middle of the pavement)! Then I had a sudden visual migraine (caused by three hours sleep) while driving and had to pull over causing some van driver to go ballistic even though I signaled and put my hazards on first. This was then topped off by my 2 year old locking me out of the house as I got the shopping out of the car.
The front door was actually on the latch at the time but he managed to pick up my keys and chubb lock the door from the inside. As I got my spare keys from my neighbour, I mentioned what had happened to me so far and he ‘helpfully’ said, “Oh you have one of those mum brains like my wife”.
Apart from being a badly timed joke, I hate the expression ‘mum brain’ because it infers that as a mum we’re all stupid, silly, and ditsy because nothing occupies our minds. Aside from the fact no-one ever says that to dads, it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to know that juggling kids, work and life takes a lot of brain cells, but of course, I didn’t say that because I am far too polite (and because I was afraid I’d SHOUT very loudly at him).
Studies actually show that far from killing off brain cells, motherhood maximizes them and even though I know that, I still feel slighted by the ‘mum-brain’ term. Or maybe I was having a sense of humour failure?
Has anyone ever accused you of having a mum brain? Do you hate the term? Let me know what you think.