It turns out I’m not just exhausted from family life – there’s a real medical reason for my forgetfulness

When my fourth child was born eight years ago, I had come to terms with the fact that I was now a big fat man. I figured that I would be a wise old owl by this point, with the kids sitting around my rocking chair hanging on my every word as I shared some incredible life lessons with them. Unfortunately, that’s not the case, as we ditched the rocking chair because it didn’t fit the Scandinavian aesthetic my wife was going for (it was apparently “a bit of Peig Sayers”), and also because I have absolutely no wisdom to speak of .

Most of my conversations with the kids are about them enlightening me and not the other way around, like when they explain how TikTok works or what “Rizz” is (slang for charisma, by the way).

In fact, not only do I not have great insight into the human condition from my nearly half century on Earth and 20 years as a parent, but my brain struggles to perform even the most basic functions, particularly in the short-term memory department.

Most of the time at home I stand in rooms not knowing what I’m doing there, turn to leave and then remember the task at hand, go back into the room and immediately forget it. Then there are my Jack-and-the-Beanstalk-style trips into town to run a few simple errands, and then return home without completing any of the errands, since I forgot the list before I did left the house. Other highlights include going through all the children’s names before naming a child by the correct one, calling a child by the dog’s name, calling the dog by the child’s name, and forgetting about my wedding anniversary (my wife did it too, so at least there is. ).

My brain has regressed to a few simple motor functions like breathing, doing laundry, boiling a kettle of ground beef, and servicing the dishwasher. Anything more complex than these simple tasks and I’m starting to fail.

I don’t think I’m alone with this kind of fugue — balancing the wants and needs of four kids, ages 20 to 8, and constantly shifting gears to accommodate them, would strain any brain. Even the queen of cleanliness, Marie Kondo, has recently admitted she’s stepped back from her exceptional tidying grá and says that with the birth of her third child, she’s now focusing on what really matters – spending time with her kids. Quite a reversal of the “throw everything in the bin” message from a few years ago. It reminds me of the old adage that you can have a clean house or a happy house and yet somehow I’ve managed not to achieve either.

The good news in all of this is that my increasing stupidity is not a sign of cognitive decline, but rather that my overall physical well-being is not what it should be. Stimulated by the fact that I wasn’t feeling my age so much as more of a decade into it, I visited my GP and blood tests showed I had an underactive thyroid and vitamin B12 deficiency; They are not in the clinical treatment zone, nor are they any type of headline-grabbing syndrome or condition, but together they were enough to keep me idle for some time.

Having children is such a consuming endeavor that it’s easy for me to forget about my own health, something I can’t afford in my late 40s. I’m past the stage of life where I can eat and drink whatever I want, lack regular exercise, and think I’ll live to sixty years in perfect health. I’ll be 60 when my youngest is 20, so I’ve got to be around for a while. I can’t ignore the little things—basic symptoms of family life like exhaustion and mental fatigue—and hope they don’t grow into big things. Even my weary, ignorant brain knows that.