Tiredness and TV tunes... just an average day in parentland

“MUM, why do you yawn so much?”

Luke came out with this gem while we were playing zoos after I’d picked him up from school.

I’d just finished a busy work day, had battled through the school traffic to get him and then he’d bombarded me with questions from the back of the car on the drive home.

They included: Is Earth too big to go into a black hole? What if it happened? How many days ’til I go swimming? What’s your favourite animal? What’s your worsest (sic) dinosaur? When can I have an Xbox? What are your ribs for?

So by the time we pulled onto the drive my head was spinning.

I had to ferociously negotiate two minutes to make myself a cup of tea before we started playing because I was flagging, and I did indeed yawn when we were playing.

I love playing with him and I know I have to make the most of these opportunities because he won’t be little forever. But I am also tired. So tired, in fact, that I often tail off in mid sentence when I try to tell my husband something vitally important because my mind goes blank.

Sometimes I fear I’m barely functioning, but my mind is still in there and working.

I know this is true because, while I would struggle to tell anyone at lunchtime what I’d had for breakfast, I can sing the entire theme song to Sophia The First from Disney Junior flawlessly.

I also know all the lyrics to the theme from My Pet and Me on CBeebies, Miles from Tomorrow on Disney Junior again and when Andy’s Dinosaur Adventures is on next.

But still I’ll stand there with the fridge door open wondering why I’d gone in there, I’ll ‘lose’ my keys and phone five times a day, panic for 20 minutes and then discover they’re both in my bag.

Has parenthood retrained or reshaped my brain so that I can only retain certain things? Or is my brain like a computer memory – it has a certain capacity and when it’s full it just starts deleting stuff at random?

If the latter is true it’s because, as parents, you never get time to “backup” your data.

When the kids are home you can’t even use the time you spend on the toilet to collect your thoughts.

Luke has a habit of following me in and sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of me while I go.

I even said to him the other day: “Where on earth do you think I’m going to escape to Luke? There’s no hidden exit in here.”

Locking the door behind me doesn’t work either. My two minutes of toilet peace is instead turned into two minutes of me watching the door handle go up and down as he repeatedly tries to get in.

Or perhaps I’ve been in a state of tiredness for so long my cognitive abilities will never fully recover.

It’s well known that sleep deprivation is a torture technique.

I also read once that in the Middle East American forces would blast their prisoners with the theme tune from the kids show Barney on a loop in a bid to make them talk.

Tiredness and non-stop children’s TV theme tunes? Just sounds like an average day in parentland to me.

My brain gets a worse battering at Christmas when there are even more things to remember. I write lists, but I’m so forgetful these days I have to write lists to remind me about my other lists. It’s a never-ending cycle of heartstopping moments when I realise I’ve forgotten something vital, followed by another heartstopping moment when I realise there’s nothing I can do about it as we’re so close to Christmas. It all adds up to brain overload and mine is just about ready to call it a day and shut down. I’m probably not alone either. And as parents we’re not likely to get a break over Christmas.

We’ll be putting Thomas and Friends track or Lego together before Father Christmas even arrives back at the North Pole after his annual present run.

And yet we’ll do it because we love our children and want them to be happy.

So never begrudge a parent the odd yawn. We’re not rude or disinterested – just really, really tired.