Why I’ll Never Again Be Ashamed of My Mommy Brain

The kids are finally heading back to real school.
Sigh of relief, anyone?

It’s been a long summer.
I don’t know if my summer was longer or shorter because of the crazy thing that I did. 

Listen to this: I ran a day camp in my own house. 

If you thought you remembered me saying I’m NOT a kid-person, you are totally right.
And yet, the special circumstances this year made me decide to just do it.

Shortly after the Zoom school program ended, I hired a couple of young girls from the neighborhood, and planned a program for six weeks. Some days went better than others, but the kids were busy and happy. 

At the end, while ready for it to be over, I was glad that I had done it. 

What I didn’t anticipate was how this Mommy camp would turn my entire self-image on its head.

The Challenges

I wasn’t sure how things would play out when camp started. As it happened, I fell into the role of camp director, planning the general schedule, ensuring the supplies were available, and overseeing any issues that came up. 

The counselors were energetic and capable and loved their job. 

But as with all jobs, it came with its challenges. Some of them were totally manageable, while others seemed out of their league.

One kid struggled with davening. While the others all sang together out loud, she would get flustered and hyperventilate when she lost the place and couldn’t catch up. 

Another child had a hard time regulating her emotions. She would cry and scream like the world was ending when someone accidentally bumped into her. 

Yet a third would get into disagreeable moods and refuse to participate in anything that was going on. 

What was the deal with these kids?

The counselors were often at a loss, and would get frustrated by these situations. 

I understood them. I remembered being in their shoes.
I remembered when I too was a counselor in camp, and couldn’t understand why some children acted so unreasonably. And while I didn’t see myself as the most empathetic person around, most of my friends didn’t fare much better. Kids were so complicated! 

There was one person I remember who did seem to get it. I can’t recall her name, but I’ll never forget her face. She was activity director in the day camp I attended one year. Even as a camper, I was in awe of her positive energy, her empathy, and her ability to handle, it seemed, basically any child in any situation. 

I wasn’t a difficult child, and so I didn’t merit her attention, but I remember being slightly jealous of those who did. 

She was, in my eyes, basically an angel. 

And suddenly over these six weeks, I saw her in myself.

These children were acting out, but what I saw in each was a delicate soul struggling with her emotions and lacking tools to cope with her circumstances. 

I saw the sincerity in the panicky girl who needed to daven every word, and her drive to succeed in her attempts to keep up with the others. 

I saw the internal pain and fierce emotions that simmered under the surface, only to burst out with the dramatic cries of the other. 

And I understood the negative spiral that pulled the third camper into her defiant and disagreeable behavior. 

None of it fazed me. 

I spent some time each day of camp dealing with these challenges, giving out generous doses of warmth and attention, and gently guiding the counselors in disciplining with care and sensitivity. 

And so the summer came to a close. 

A New Understanding of Mommy Brain

Camp was over, but I had emerged with an entirely new image of myself. 

I was empathetic. I was patient. I was strong, yet kind. I had the skills, the sensitivity, and the love for dealing with young children and their complicated emotions. 

That wasn’t the person I knew myself to be. 

And I realized I had changed. 

I mean, I knew my brain had changed.

I knew all too well about all the things I couldn’t seem to remember for no particular reason. I was very familiar with the utterly blank and fuzzy sense that I felt when faced with even the most basic math equations.

We all know about Mommy Brain. 

Only suddenly I had discovered the flipside. 

Giving birth to six children in seven years had literally transformed my brain and my heart, filling it with a special energy, wisdom, and sense to connect with other people.

I knew without a shadow of doubt that it was connected to my children. And then, when I checked in with Google to see if others had yet discovered the same, I found this amazing article from the New York Times. To quote a few lines: 

…there is no convincing scientific evidence that pregnancy causes an overall decline in cognitive performance or memory.

Instead, most experts believe that pregnant women’s brain changes are an example of neuroplasticity, the process in which the brain changes throughout life by reorganizing connections in response to the stimulation of new experiences, and neurogenesis, the process of growth that allows for new learning. A 2016 study in Nature Neuroscience found that even two years after pregnancy, women had gray matter brain changes in regions involved in social cognition or the ability to empathically understand what is going on in the mind of another person, to put yourself in their shoes.

In other words, science has shown that not only does Mommy Brain not cause us to be slower, it actually strengthens our brain in the areas that really count in life.

But I shouldn’t be surprised. 

After all, carrying a beautiful, pure soul inside my own body and bringing it into the world is sure to come with its benefits. 

And Mommy Brain (or should we call it Mommy Heart?) is a benefit that is sure to take me far.