Local Woman Realizes Her Family Cannot, In Fact, Read Her Mind
After ending her day with crippling disappointment at yet another unresolved unsaid expectation, a young woman has finally realized her family cannot read her mind.
KANSAS CITY, Missouri - A local wife of almost eight years and mother of two small children went to bed disappointed by the expectations she set in her head. Kailyn Rhinehart, 30, has been working on her communication for a while now, but just can’t quite get it right. When she became a wife and mother she knew she would take on much of the housework. She says she was okay with this. She did not, however, know she had to verbally ask the people who live inside the same house to do things.
“I just… figured they’d magically know what I wanted.” She tells us. Rhinehart appears dismayed and tired, her hair not quite in a bun. “But I was way over my head that day and things kept piling up… I… I needed a break. I needed time out of the house without my children. I needed my toddler to stop touching me, and yelling so loud, and smearing things on the walls and table.”
She wanted her house to be cleaned (by someone other than herself), the toys to be picked up (before she had to yell), and the garbage to be taken out (before it had to be pushed down inside the can). Frankly, she just wanted some quiet and space. Maybe to talk to another adult for five minutes without interruption. When asked if she mentioned this to her husband or kids, she admits that she did not.
“I felt like I shouldn’t have to,” she says with a shrug. “Like it would be wrong to spell out exactly what I needed. I thought they would know by now. Or I would just do the things I needed to do myself, and it would be fine.”
It was not fine.
Rhinehart reached a breaking point one night. It started much like the other nights, but this one was different. Around 5:23 pm things became chaos—an unusual addition to the everyday chaos. All it took was tripping over the pile of laundry in the hallway she swore she would finish putting away after the kids went to bed. Rhinehart was overstimulated, tired, and overwhelmed. Her children were in the bath. She still had to finish washing the sheets she forgot she took off their bed, and bedtime was in less than two hours.
She expected her husband to be able to read the list she keeps inside her head of everything else she needed to get done. Unfortunately, he could not. She said she expected him to help more that day. She wanted him to anticipate her overwhelm before it happened and then swoop in without her asking. Rhinehart went on a rampage her later husband said, “ended in tears.”
“I was getting the kids in the bath,” her husband tells us. “I didn’t know she wanted me to help her. She…she never asked.” Rhinehart appeared helpless when we spoke to him. When asked where his wife was now he replied, “I’m not sure, but I heard some muttering and cabinet door slams coming from the kitchen.”
The following morning our team caught up with a much calmer version of Rhinehart than previously described. When asked what she would do differently?
“I would vocalize my overwhelm before it got out of hand. And I wouldn’t expect my family to know what’s going on in my head the whole time. I’m working on it,” she tells us with a sheepish smile.
