This is Ask Lisa, a podcast to help people understand the psychology of parenting.

Psychologist Dr. Lisa DeMore, author of two New York Times best-selling parenting books, takes your questions.

And I'm co-host, Rina Ninan, a journalist and mom of two.

Some of what we talk about comes from raising children ourselves.

Most of the time, I'll be getting answers to your parenting questions.

So send your questions to Ask Lisa at Dr.LisaDemore.com.

Episode 81, why is our kid being so mean to us? I can't shake this feeling of exhaustion all the time.

I can't even say the word exhaustion.

I'm so exhausted.

Rina, I laid down at 6.15 yesterday afternoon.

You did? Yeah, in the evening,

and I never do that. And I just couldn't get it together. So I just was like, I'm going to go

lay down. Well, why? I just don't know. It's like my brain is constantly on all the time,

thinking about how to do what to cook for dinner, or did we clean up

this? I've got to finish this for the company. What, I just, like, how do we reset that

sometimes? Well, I think summer will help. And one of the sayings in schools that I think is really

helpful is the idea of 100 days of May. You know, it's almost like the winter holiday in terms of,

like, all the extra demands, but, you know, there's just so much stuff you have to do to get kids out of the

school year and get kids into the summer. And so I think part of the exhaustion I'm feeling is

like the double life quality of it. I'm trying to help them close down and go to all these

events for the end of the school year, which are lovely,

while also doing all of this negotiating around, you know, how we're spending the summer,

...