The Invisible Switch: Parenting, Working, and Somehow Staying?Afloat

Our amazing strength to continue when we have nothing?left.

I’m writing this at 3:17?AM.

My son’s fever rose to 107 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s scary stuff. The cool washcloth I’ve been replacing on his forehead every half hour is now drying on the bathroom counter. After a hospital visit and some meds, he’s finally sleeping, though we’re still instinctively listening for that troubled breathing that kept us perched on the edge of his bed for the last four hours.

In about five hours, I’ll be leading a team meeting. Somehow, I’ll be coherent, making decisions that affect our quarterly deliverables. Somehow, I’ll find a way to be present, engaged, and valuable to my colleagues. We’ll see how that goes.

How do we do this? I honestly don’t know. It’s this strange parental superpower, an invisible switch we flip when necessary.

Let me paint you the current scene in our?home.

One son is running a stubborn fever that’s kept us up for two nights; has something called “Hand, Foot, and Mouth”. He’s also nursing a mild concussion from a playground incident at school earlier this week. My other boy is hobbling around with a broken toe, wincing with each step but still determined to play. My third son, while healthy, likely feels neglected with all the time we’ve spent with the other two.

My wife is the true rockstar. She, the unsung hero of our household, has been bouncing between them like a pinball, breaking up fights, dispensing medicine, comfort, and keeping our home's basic functions from collapsing entirely.

She doesn’t get to close a door and pretend everything’s normal for a few hours. She’s in the trenches all day, every day. When I come upstairs after work, I can see it in her eyes, that thousand-yard stare of someone who’s been negotiating with tiny irrational dictators all day.

Yet somehow she still has patience and unwavering love. There’s a peaceful honor in being completely depleted for someone or something you love.

And me? I’m going off-camera in Zoom calls to get her updates on fever temperatures and medication schedules, muting myself on calls to yell down the hallway that yes, I’ll be there in just a minute to help.

It’s absurd when you step back and look at it. It’s a perfect storm of chaos, and yet… we’re managing. Barely, but managing.

There’s a strange divide in my days?now.

It’s a line separating Dad-me from Work-me. They’re the same person, obviously, operating from the same sleep-deprived brain, but they feel like different people entirely.

Work-me finds the energy to analyze problems, respond thoughtfully to Slack messages, coordinate the strategy of a billion-dollar company, and contribute ideas in meetings. I don’t fully understand where that ability comes from.

Dad-me is running on fumes, forgetting if I already gave the pain medication or if that was my wife, and trying to remember which kid needs which thing at which time.

Once I close my laptop at the end of the workday, that invisible switch flips again. The professional vocabulary disappears, replaced by soft, loving reassurances and silly voices that might coax a smile from a miserable child.

Nobody talks enough about the cost of this switching.

About how it drains you from the inside out, or how both worlds desire 100% of you. Everything looks different after a night with no sleep. I’ve yet to find a book about staring blankly into the refrigerator at midnight, having opened it for a reason you can no longer remember.

The mental gymnastics required to compartmentalize exhaustion, worry, and work responsibilities is something they don’t prepare you for in parenting books or management training.

There’s no instruction manual for focusing on quarterly outcomes when your phone keeps lighting up with texts from your wife about rising fevers. I’ve yet to find an online course on keeping your voice steady during presentations when you’re running on two hours of broken sleep.

But here’s what I’ve been thinking about lately in those strange quiet moments between?crises.

Humans are amazing. I’m watching my wife summon patience from an empty well when our son asks for the fourteenth popsicle in an hour to soothe his sore throat. My brain somehow partitions itself to focus on work problems despite the background noise of worry.

We’re not superheroes. We’re just… parents. A working dad and a stay-at-home mom. Doing what countless other spectacular humans do every single day without recognition or fanfare. I wonder how many people in my meetings are performing similar feats of compartmentalization. How many have spent the night before with sick children, elderly parents, or their health struggles?

How many are flipping that same invisible switch?

But I’ve found small moments of grace in our?chaos.

The weight of my son’s head against my shoulder as he finally surrenders to sleep. The silent communication between my wife and me, an entire conversation contained in a single glance across the living room. The surprising moments of clarity that sometimes emerge from sleep-deprived delirium (like this article haha).

There’s something strangely beautiful about discovering our limits and then watching ourselves exceed them because someone else needs you to. I don’t have profound wisdom to offer here. No three-step plan for balancing it all or a self-help book that’ll become the next Best Seller. Some days, survival is the only metric that matters.

But, here’s what I do know.

After 13 years of this parenting gig, I’ve picked up a few things that might help someone else in the trenches.

First, lower your standards across the board when crisis hits. The house will be a disaster. Meals will be whatever’s easiest. Dishes and laundry will pile up. Work will get what they need from you, just maybe not your best. And that’s okay. I wasted years feeling guilty about this before realizing it’s pure survival mode, not a character flaw.

Second, tag-teaming is everything if you can. My wife and I have this unspoken system now where we can read each other’s exhaustion levels. When one of us hits the wall, the other steps up without being asked. No scorekeeping, no martyrdom. Just the silent understanding that we’re in this together, and sometimes one of us needs to tap out before we break.

Third (and this took me way too long to learn), accept help when it’s offered. My mother-in-law wants to come visit and help? Yes, please come. A colleague offers to cover a meeting? Absolutely. Neighbor kid could entertain the healthy child for an hour? Sign us up. Pride has no place in parenting during crisis mode.

Fourth, be ridiculously honest with your kids about your limitations. “Dad is really tired today and might be grumpy, but it’s not your fault.” They understand more than we think, and they’d rather have the truth than wonder why you’re snapping at them over nothing.

And maybe the biggest lesson… This phase always passes. Always. When you’re in the thick of it with sick kids and work chaos, it feels eternal. But I’ve lived through enough of these storms to know they eventually end. The kids get better. Sleep returns. The impossible juggling act becomes regular parenting again.

We’re all just making it up as we go. And somehow, that has to be?enough.

We’re all out here, flipping invisible switches, falling apart and pulling ourselves together in the same breath. It’s not sustainable. It’s not ideal. But it won’t last forever. There’s connection in knowing we’re not alone in these impossible balancing acts.

Tomorrow, we’ll do it all again, finding reserves we didn’t know we had. We’ll surprise ourselves with our capacity to care, work, and endure. That’s the job. It’s the life we’ve chosen or that has chosen us. And despite the exhaustion and worry, despite everything… it is an absolute privilege to be so needed, so essential to these small humans who trust us implicitly to make their world right again.

Even if it means flipping that impossible switch, day after impossible day.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to check a temperature, review a presentation, kiss a tired wife, and maybe (just maybe?) close my eyes for a minute. Until the next fever. Until the next meeting. Until the next time I need to become someone else entirely to meet the moment.

When I think about it, it's nothing short of miraculous.

??

Thanks for reading.

Are you looking to stand out and improve how others experience you? I teach soft skills that get you hired and promoted. Connect with nearly 5,000 others on my Medium page, or add me on LinkedIn, Instagram, and X.

I can’t wait to help you design the UX of YOU!