You're Allowed to Be Exhausted: A Reality Check Before the Summer Holidays

Feeling like an exhausted parent before the summer holidays have even started? You're allowed to be. This short, one-take episode — no editing, no polish, on purpose — is a reality check on parent burnout, the mental load, and why holidays with young kids are not actually holidays (they're taking the show on the road).

Recorded at the start of the Dutch summer break, this episode gives you permission to rest before you crash — because burnout doesn't send a calendar invite, and the signs of parental exhaustion are easy to miss until someone points them out. Consider this that someone.

Inside: a four-question burnout self-check you can do on the bike, why the gap between how you're doing and how you say you're doing is the first warning light, lowering the bar for the school holidays without guilt, and why five minutes a day beats the 5K run you keep not doing. With a little help from Brené Brown's Daring Greatly and Leonard Cohen's beauty of cracks.

Part of DAM Parenting's ongoing conversation about what it actually takes to stay well while raising kids far from home — because parents don't need fixing, they need conditions where they can function.