Why School Spirit Week Doesn’t Break Me Anymore

The simple system that saves my sanity from pajama days, permission slips, and endless reminders

This week is Halloween and it feel like I’m getting pummeled from requests on my time and energy.

Frank had a pumpkin due last week that was supposed to be decorated to look a character from a book. We spent several hours on Sunday creating a pumpkin version of Captain Underpants.

In addition to our regular Halloween costumes for trick or treating, both of my elementary school kids are supposed to dress up for the “vocabulary parade” at school which required additional costumes.

And this year since Frank is in 5th grade, I’ve been asked to bring in donations for the Halloween school dance to raise funds for the 5th grade party. Oh yes, and I volunteered to help out for 30 minutes at the actual event.

In addition to all that, it’s red ribbon week and each the day the kids are supposed to wear different things. Today it was a red shirts and no Libby doesn’t own anything red.

Sigh.

I’m sure you have your own laundry list of all these expectations placed on you by the school and community and it feels like a lot.

Well, it is a lot.

Because at the heart of it, you, like me, want to be a really great mom.

You care deeply about your kids and want to them to feel loved and cared for and to not be the only kid who shows up without a red shirt.

A few years ago, I started looking at these tasks as “mom admin” and developed a strategy that’s helped me to navigate these requests.

Here’s how I’ve learned to navigate all of this “extra” mom stuff without massive amounts of mom guilt.

1. I stopped looking to others to decide what it means to be a good mom.

2. I prioritize having margin and designed a life where I can live within my capacity.

3. I focus on what matters to my kids and stopped trying to impress others.

4. I created a Mom Admin rotation that allows me to set boundaries and have clear expectations for myself.

I stopped looking to others to decide what it means to be a good mom.

I’ve been seeing so many posts lately about being a “type B” mom and I’ll be honest that they’re kind of pissing me off. I really hate this idea that if you don’t check certain boxes that it makes you a bad mom because in fact I think if you are self aware and have healthy boundaries around your time and energy, that makes you a really great mom.

The mom who has their kids in the “right” clothes for every spirit day and volunteers for every fundraiser and reads every school email 5 minutes after it has been sent… could be struggling in many other ways. She might have excellent organizational skills but might also struggle with patience and her temper. Checking those boxes doesn’t make you a “good mom”.

Similarly, not having the capacity to meet every request doesn’t make you a “bad mom”. It makes you a human with limited resources of time, money and emotional energy. If you are giving more than you have in any of these categories it will backfire on you and your family.

For years, I was overcommitting my time and energy to meet every request at the detriment of me and my family. I didn’t have any emotional energy left to regulate my emotions or to help them regulate theirs. I’ve learned that for me to be a “good mom” in the ways that matter the most to me and my children, it means leaving those boxes unchecked so that I have energy left in the tank to support my kids well.

If I get all of the spirit days right and behind closed doors I’m yelling and screaming at my kids and hiding in my room because I can’t tolerate the noise and emotions, that’s not a win to me. Choosing to preserve my energy, my sanity and my time in favor of a calm and peaceful home life isn’t what I consider a “type B” mom.

I prioritize having margin and designed a life where I can live within my capacity.

I’ve explained my 6-7 taxing task system on this post so go there if you are new here! But the main idea is that I try to limit my ongoing executive functioning so that I have more mental energy to do all of the things.

I’ve found that for me and for many moms with ADHD, these areas of “mom admin” can be areas where we easily go overboard. Sometimes, the mom admin tasks are fun to us and we want to say yes.

We want to do the pumpkin craft, and go to the halloween dance, and create a fun costume for the kids. These tasks may individually be fun and an opportunity for creativity and novelty which we love. But, when we take on TOO MUCH, they compound and can leave us overwhelmed and dysregulated.

The tricky part is creating boundaries about how much of this admin we can take on without it becoming too much. And since our brains struggle with prioritization AND decision paralysis, we have a hard time narrowing down what should get our attention and what we can take off our plate.

For me, accepting that my brain will always want to do ALL of the things and that I need really clear boundaries around what is getting my time and attention in order to have the mental and emotional energy to support my kids well has been life changing.

This didn’t happen overnight and required some mourning. There was a sense of loss accepting that I can’t do all of the “mom things” things that I thought I could but accepting these limitations and then designing a life where I have clear expectations has helped immensely.

I talk to so many moms with ADHD who tell me that they feel like a failure. The main reason why is because their expectations are so far out of alignment with their capacity. They stay stuck and frustrated because they think they should be able to do far more than humanly possible.

Accepting that I have limited capacity around executive functioning means designing a life where I have margin. It guides my expectations around myself so that I don’t say yes to all of the things and then feel defeated and disappointed in myself when my capacity can’t keep up.

I focus on what matters to my kids and stopped trying to impress others.

The painted pumpkin project that I did with Frank was really important to him. He got 20 extra credit points and he was really jazzed about working on it. He asked me about it several times a day for a week.

I spent a good amount of time and energy helping him on that project because he really cared about it. Had the paper come home in his folder and he showed no interest in the project, I would have not worried about it and not given it a second thought.

I’ve learned to focus more on what matters to my kids and to let go of what the teachers, staff and volunteers think about our participation. Their agenda isn’t always our agenda.

That doesn’t mean that I’m always able to worry about every request my kids have but I’m going to prioritize what matters to them over fulfilling every request that comes my way.

Do they want to attend the Fall dance?

Do they want me to chaperone?

Do they want me to be at the class Christmas party?

The answers to these questions are a little different for each of my kids. I show up a little differently for each of them because they have different priorities and love languages. When I'm feeling stretched thin, I try to gauge how important it is to my kids and let that be what drives my decisions.

Spirit days is one of those things that my kids really don’t care about. It’s not a priority for them throughout the year and so it’s not something I’m going to allocate my limited mental energy to address.

Over time, I’ve gotten a good idea of what matters to my kids and where they will want me to show up and up. I can now plan for these things in advance and we have our little routines.

Libby always wants to have a birthday party where the boys could care less.

Frank likes for me to plan his school class parties. Bowman and Libby don’t care as much.

Bowman likes for me to volunteer for his band on home games but doesn’t want me to chaperone or attend away games.

I prioritize what matters to my kids and let the rest go.

I created a Mom Admin rotation that allows me to set boundaries and have clear expectations for myself.

As part of my 6-7 taxing tasks strategy, I plan to do two weekly tasks each day. I have a list of 14 ongoing weekly tasks that repeats each week. One of those tasks is “mom admin” so I budget that once a week, I’ll devote some of my mental capacity to one of these mom admin tasks.

I have three different mom admin lists. I have a Spring list that January-April, a Summer list that is May-August and then a Fall list that is September-December. I try to limit each list to 20 tasks. Given that each season is 17 weeks, that works out to right around 1 “mom admin” task a week.

It doesn’t always perfectly work out so that I only do one task a week. Some weeks I do none and some weeks I do a few more. But the exercise of editing my list each season helps me to clarify my priorities and then to set boundaries as new requests pop up. This list also helps me to think ahead especially during the holidays so that Decembers are less stressful.

My lists don’t change much from year to year so I now have a pretty clear idea of what I have time and energy to add to my plate. For example, I know that I don’t have the capacity for family travel during the holidays. If we did a trip instead of doing gifts for the kids and family members, that would work but adding a trip to this list would push me over the 20 tasks.

Because I’ve thought through my capacity, I don’t have guilt or feel bad about declining a request because I know my limits. It’s much easier for me to make decisions and means that I avoid getting depleted and burned out.

So back to the example of the spirit days for red ribbon week or literacy week or kindness week or whatever else theme week the school decides to promote. When that pops up in the school communications, I know that I don’t have the capacity to worry about tracking down a silly hat or crazy socks or a purple shirt. I don’t add that to my plate or to my mental list of things that I “should do”. I pretty much just ignore it.

I have capacity to make sure my kids have the fun themed clothes for the week before Christmas and that is on my mom admin list. I’ve found that for some reason, my kid’s always care about the themes on those two weeks and so I’ll make an extra trip to the dollar store so they have what they need for that one week. But, I don’t have the capacity to find the purple shirt on a random Tuesday. I don’t feel like a failure for not providing the purple shirt because I never expected myself to be able to do so in the first place.

Having these clear expectations for myself and boundaries around what I can add to my plate has helped immensely. I no longer feel like a failure or like I’m dropping all of the balls because I’m not expecting myself to sign up for every volunteer shift, have the themed outfits, or bring in all of the goodies. I help and serve but only within my capacity.

If some random request comes through and I do have the capacity to help in that way than I’ll gladly do so. For example, the request to donate oreo cookies for the 5th grade fundraiser on Thursday. I’m glad to help as long as I’m not getting depleted or burned out in the process.

I’m giving you a free PDF to create your own Mom Admin list for all paid subscribers. Download and personalize the PDF below. I’d love to hear how you use this system to help you and your family. By becoming a paid subscriber, you’ll get free access to all of the tools I share in the future.