Why Experts Say Parents Should Try ‘Bare Minimum Monday’ Parenting

Truthfully, I don't do anything "bare minimum." Not when I'm coming up with a new wellness and workout plan to get back on track, not when I'm picking out a ridiculously thoughtful birthday gift for someone I love, and not when I'm planning "simple" fall crafts with my children that somehow turn into a self-guided Saturday morning preschool class. My type A qualities will likely always be at the core of who I am, but becoming a mother has forced me to loosen my grip.

Unlike some of the other goals I chase, there’s no one signing off on how I parent my children. There’s no rubric, no final draft, no metrics to achieve. And the harder I chase 100 percent, the more I end up short-tempered, spent, and convinced I’m failing at the thing I care about most. But the very idea of doing less to be a better mom didn’t compute for me.

So, reluctantly—but with a real need to take some pressure off myself—I've become curious about "Bare Minimum Mondays." The trend, which took off on TikTok in 2022 when creator Marisa Jo Mayes gave herself permission to do the least necessary at work, started as a workplace philosophy: Do only what's essential on the hardest days to avoid burnout. But what happens when you apply it to parenting?

I talked to three therapists about what "bare minimum" means as a parent, how it's different from checking out, and, maybe most importantly for relieving mom guilt, what our kids really take away from watching us do less.

Let's start with what it isn't: neglect. The fear for most parents is that scaling back is the first step toward letting it all go, but the therapists I spoke with say the two are very different.

Caitlin Weese, LCSW-C, a trauma therapist, describes bare minimum Mondays as "an intentional and thoughtful choice to proactively simplify and scale back in order to avoid burnout and checking out mentally." In other words, it's not a free pass to coast, and it's not martyrdom, either. It's a middle path that protects you and your kids at the same time.

According to Dr. Bonnie J. Mitchell, D.B.H., LPCC, a licensed professional clinical counselor, what separates scaling back from checking out comes down to "presence, intent, and priorities." A rough day might mean sitting on the couch while your kids color or watching a movie instead of organizing a big outing or an afternoon of structured play. Checking out is something else entirely. "Forgetting to feed the kids or expecting them to fend for themselves or even staring at your phone while a child is crying and begging for attention," is checking out, she says. “Bare minimum” is not doing nothing, it’s just doing less.

Done right, Mitchell says, scaling back allows you "to protect the one asset your child actually needs in a crisis, which is a calm, regulated adult who is physically present, even if dinner comes from a box and the TV stays on." The alternative, she adds, is that pushing through societal expectations on an empty tank "only breeds irritability and toxic guilt."

Here's how the experts suggest putting it into practice.

Before you scale anything back, get honest about what a regular day actually asks of you. When a parent tells Kendall Maloof, LMFT, clinical director at Eagle Creek Ranch Recovery, that they're doing the bare minimum, Maloof's first question is always, "What were you doing before?"

The answer is often an exhausting list that many caregivers can relate to: whipping together nutritionally balanced meals, helping students with homework and projects, scheduling appointments, loads of laundry on repeat, planning weekend activities, and keeping the household running like a well-oiled machine. Then, when there’s a “glitch” in the internal system and you don’t have the energy to function at your highest level, you see it as a failure.

Maloof says that reaction can point to something bigger than one rough evening. When a household runs at full speed for long enough, whether that’s one parent or two, that pace starts to feel like the baseline, and any dip can feel like falling short, even when everyone is doing their best.

This illustrates that part of the issue is the bar itself. "Parents are now expected to create a remarkable amount of content for their children's lives," Maloof says. "Meals should be nutritious, weekends memorable, activities educational, and family time, emotionally meaningful. That is impossible to reproduce every day." Real homes, Maloof adds, "have evenings when the food is simple, the conversation is brief, and everybody needs an early night."

So before the next hard day hits, ask yourself Maloof's question. Knowing what you're actually doing day in and day out, and how much of it is essential versus extra, tells you where the floor really is.

While you can't exactly tell a 6-month-old you're tired and ask them to please sleep through the night, preschoolers and older kids appreciate a developmentally appropriate heads-up. They can handle a low-key evening with a low-energy parent. Maloof says, "What confuses them is feeling tension in the home without understanding where it came from."

Her insight tracks with research: in a lab study of mothers and their 12- to 14-month-old babies, the babies' physiological stress responses mirrored their mothers' after the moms went through a stressful task, suggesting kids pick up on our state long before they can talk.

Without talking about how you're feeling, kids can easily read a quiet, drained parent as an angry or distant one. Mitchell's fix is to share the plan up front, and she offers a script: "Today is a slow motion day for Mom/Dad. My battery is super low, so we are going to keep things extra simple. We're doing movie time, simple snacks, and no big messes today. I need lots of rest, but I'm going to be right here with you."

Maloof adds that it's important not to tie your rough day to a demand for good behavior, as in, "You need to behave because I cannot cope." This shifts the weight onto them, which isn't fair and can create a bad habit of trying to please you or being your caretaker instead of the other way around. To help them make sense of how you're feeling and why it isn't their fault, Weese recommends narrating your choices out loud so kids can internalize the "why" of it all: "I’m feeling tired, so I’m going to be kind to my body and rest and buy cookies for your bake sale instead of making them."

Kids pick up how to handle stress by watching us, and researchers who study emotion regulation point to observation and modeling as a big part of how it happens. Mitchell says hearing a parent calmly name their limits "teaches kids to recognize their own limits rather than pushing through until they burn out or explode." She also sees a lesson in flexibility: when your energy changes, the plan can change with it, which she believes is "a foundational pillar of emotional resilience."

When there's more on your plate than energy to match it, Weese sorts everything into three buckets. Here's what each one looks like:

• Simplify what you can't skip. "You have to feed your kids, but a low-bandwidth day isn't the day to make a gourmet meal," Weese says. The fix: "Make something easier; opt for frozen or premade options." For me, this usually means my daughters have boxed mac 'n' cheese and get to sit at their play table in the playroom instead of the kitchen table. This lets me eat what I want when I don't have energy to cook (usually popcorn) after they go to bed, without having a big cleanup.
• Delay whatever can wait, like the "simple" fall craft that can happen next weekend instead. It will still happen, but it doesn't need to happen right now.
• Delegate whatever someone else can handle. Weese's example is a playdate you promised your child: a partner can take over the planning, or you can suggest hosting at the other family's house instead.

On the delegating front, Maloof says a hard day is a moment for the whole household to adjust. If there's another adult at home, that person can make dinner "without asking where every ingredient is or waiting to be assigned a job."

Kids can chip in at their level, too. "A six-year-old can put clothes in the laundry basket. A teenager can make toast, clear the table, or load the dishwasher." That doesn't mean turning kids into Cinderella. Children, Maloof says, "should not be responsible for calming a distressed parent or keeping the home functioning." The point is to teach them "that living together involves noticing when something needs to be done and taking part."

Mitchell calls it a "survival mode" menu, and it's exactly what it sounds like: a short list of go-to dinners that take almost no thought, like a snack plate of cheese sticks, crackers, sliced apples, and deli turkey, or frozen meals on paper plates. Her philosophy: "Let the dinner be cereal or frozen nuggets on paper plates, let the living room floor stay cluttered with toys, and let the TV run an extra movie."

While you might see this as low effort and shower yourself in guilt over what you "should" be doing, your kids probably see it differently: food they really like to eat instead of begrudgingly taking nibbles at broccoli, and an extra episode of their favorite show. Weese agrees. "If it's laughing while you eat boxed mac and cheese for dinner versus the meal you planned, that's fine!" she says. "And let's be real, the kid will probably like the dinner more!"

Maloof adds: "A prepared meal is still food. An extra hour of television is sometimes the reason a tired adult manages to get through dinner without shouting. Ordering food may leave enough energy for a calm bedtime,” she says. “One practical decision on one difficult day tells us very little about the quality of someone's parenting."

When you're under pressure from a deadline at work, not feeling your best, or generally low on energy, skip the parent-guided LEGO builds and craft sessions, Mitchell says. The common thread in her ideas is that your job is to be a calm presence, not the activity director. Think a blanket-and-pillows "floor campsite" in the living room, an audiobook the whole family listens to, or letting your kid play doctor while you lie there as the very cooperative patient. You're still with them, still present, but not directing their imagination or play.

My daughters love dress-up, and when I'm not feeling like putting together a lesson plan or going to the playground, I suggest they make me into a princess, a character from Bluey or whatever else they're into that week. I get to sit down while they go through their dress-up clothes, put wigs on me, ‘paint’ my nails and do my ‘makeup.’ It requires very little of me, but I’m not looking at my phone or ignoring them.

Remember, being nearby doesn't mean putting on a fake cheerful face, and nothing the experts told me requires it. The point of saying "my battery is low" is that you don't have to hide it. What Mitchell asks you to hold onto is "warm emotional availability" instead: "Even when you have zero energy for games or elaborate routines, holding onto a gentle, welcoming posture is the single thing that keeps a low-effort day feeling safe instead of distant."

In practice, that can be as simple as a quiet cuddle on the couch while they watch something and you close your eyes. Mitchell says that preserves "the core attachment bond."

Everything above is for the occasional rough day, but if it describes most of your days, Maloof says it should be a red warning signal that something might need to change. The question shifts from your coping skills to how the work is divided. "Who carries the household schedule in their head? Who notices that the toothpaste is running out? Who gets uninterrupted time, and who is expected to arrange everything before taking a break?"

Sometimes, Maloof says, "responsibilities need to be redistributed between adults." Some families can pay for help, while others may need "support from relatives, friends, school staff or a therapist." Whatever the solution, "it cannot always be another system that the most exhausted person must research, introduce and manage."

When I'm spiraling about not doing enough, it helps to know what kids are actually keeping score of. "Kids do not measure love in organic meals, elaborate bedtime rituals, or social-media-worthy enrichment," Mitchell says. "They measure love in safety, warmth, and predictability."

A large study in the Journal of Marriage and Family found that the sheer number of hours mothers spent with kids ages 3 to 11 didn't predict their behavior, emotions or academic outcomes, while a mother's own distress level did matter. What kiddos pick up from watching us scale back, Mitchell adds, is that love doesn't hinge on how much we accomplish, and that parents are allowed to be "human and not super humans."

Weese says doing "less" can be a relief for you and your child alike, particularly if you're a "recovering people-pleaser or perfectionist," which describes me to a T. (Cue the Taylor Swift song about being the problem.)

She points out that the standards many of us hold ourselves to as moms are often rooted in early experiences that taught us to measure up. Her reality check is one most of us have lived: "Sometimes skipping the extra activity so you can be present versus a raving lunatic is best for you and your kiddo." And being kind to yourself isn't indulgent: a review of parenting programs with self-compassion components found they lowered parents' stress, anxiety and depression, though the evidence on kids' outcomes was mixed.

Kids are always taking notes on what adulthood looks like, Maloof says. "Children form their understanding of adulthood by watching us live it." If a parent repeatedly ignores exhaustion and then becomes resentful, she says, "Children may conclude that caring for people means having no limits." But a tired household that regroups, pitches in and gets through a so-so night without blame sends a powerful message: "People become tired. Plans change. The family remains intact."