Are You 'The Little Red Hen'? The Story EVERY High-Functioning Mom Can Relate To

Whether you’ve heard the story of The Little Red Hen or not, you know what it’s like to feel like you’re doing everything and everyone else gets to enjoy the fruits of your labor. This classic children’s story epitomizes the struggle of the high-functioning mom who always does it all without any help or appreciation.

In this episode, I offer a few of my own personal impressions and insights into what The Little Red Hen can teach overwhelmed moms who feel tired and resentful of carrying the huge invisible load of motherhood.

BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:

•  How common and normal it is to get frustrated by how much you feel like you have to do compared to others
• Why wallowing in pity because you’re the little red hen of your family hurts everyone
• Why speaking up and asking for help isn’t just hard; it’s threatening to your very identity 
• What happens on a nervous-system level when you start to hold boundaries or “impose” on others

HOMEWORK:

Your homework for this episode is to think about whether you feel like The Little Red Hen. If so, what are two ways you could do a little less or delegate a little more? Email me or DM me on Instagram @solutionsforsimplicity to share your thoughts!

COMING UP NEXT:

Join me back next episode to learn how your present-day triggers actually stem from childhood wounds and why it’s so important to do the inner work of healing to ensure you don’t pass those wounds on to your kids.

 Whether you've listened to this podcast for a while OR it's your first episode, you can hopefully tell how passionate I am about helping you get to the root of your stress & heal your hidden wounds so both you & your family can flourish.

Right now I'm offering three POWERFUL new masterclasses to help you break free of perfectionism, people pleasing, & self neglect. Sign up here!

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Transcript

0:49

Every high-functioning mom reaches that point where she just gets furious that she is the one who is doing it all and it not only feels like no one is helping, but no one sees and no one cares. If that is you, you are going to love this episode. I am taking you through a classic story that epitomizes this struggle. Then we will, of course, unpack it and really dissect the big takeaways so you can break this vicious cycle and really work to make things different. Welcome to More Time for Mom, where overwhelmed moms get science-backed strategies to overcome the hidden sources of stress stealing your time and joy. I'm your host, Dr. Amber Curtis. Ready to make more time for you? Let's dive in. One of the age-old issues that high-functioning moms deal with is that enduring question, if I don't do it, who will? It feels like it's all on you, which just leads to bitterness, frustration, resentment, and burnout. Ask me how I know! This is the story of the little red hen, which you have probably heard in various forums and various other places. I have the fondest memories of my dad actually reading this story to me when I was a little girl. It is from the Better Homes and Gardens storybook. It's copyright 1950 and I got this same book so that I can read it to my kids. What I love about it is that the story has a bunch of different pictures to represent various words. And so it makes it really easy for new readers or even my little three-year-old is helping me to tell this story as we go along just by looking at the picture. You obviously can't see those pictures here through the podcast, but I'm going to read this story the way my dad always did, which is trying to put on some funny kind of theatrical voices for the different characters. It might sound silly, but that's okay because, hey, you are more than welcome to laugh at me. As I read this, I encourage you to just settle in whatever you're doing. Maybe you're driving. Maybe you're doing the dishes. Maybe you're just lying down and you really can't absorb what I'm about to read. But I want you to just kind of take it in and then think about two things. First, does this version of The Little Red Hen match up with any prior version that you already knew, right? Second, I really want you to put yourself in the shoes of The Little Red Hen. And I want you to just think about how it feels. When you are doing so much and it feels like nobody is helping, how do you tend to respond with your family members? Without further ado, let me read the story and then we will recap and go through a few things at the end. The Little Red Hen Once upon a time, there was a little red hen, who lived in a little house on the edge of a big forest. She could cook and she could sew, and she swept and dusted the little house every day. She had a garden where she planted corn and potatoes and peas and sunflowers. With the little red hen lived a cat and a rat and a mouse. The little red hen cooked their meals and took good care of them, but they were very lazy and never did anything to help her. One morning, the sun came up bright and early and woke the little red hen. She popped out of bed and prepared the breakfast. A bowl of cream for the cat, a cup of corn for the rat, a plate of wheat for the mouse, and a little blue dish of breadcrumbs for herself. Then she woke the cat, the rat, and the mouse. The cat washed himself, and the rat and the mouse brushed their whiskers, and they all sat down to breakfast and ate up every bit. When she had washed and dried the dishes and the little blue dish and put them away, and swept the kitchen with her little broom, the little red hen said, Today I think I will bake a beautiful cake. The cat said, goody. The rat said, goody, goody. The mouse said, goody, goody, goody. Then the little red hen asked, who will go to the woodpile and fetch some logs to heat the oven to bake my beautiful cake? The cat said, I won't. The rat said, I won't. The mouse said, I won't. So the little red hen said, then I'll have to go and do it myself. And she did. Then the little red hen said, who will go to the meadow and milk the cow and bring fresh milk to put in my beautiful cake? The cat said, I won't. The rat said, I won't. The mouse said, I won't. So the little red hen said, well, then I'll have to go and do it myself. So she did. Then the little red hen said, who will go to the nest and find eggs to beat into my beautiful cake? The cat said, I won't. The rat said, I won't. The mouse said, I won't. And the little red hen said, then I must go and do it myself. So she did. Then the little red hen said, who will go to the shop and buy butter and sugar and flour to put in my beautiful cake? The cat said, I won't. The rat said, I won't. The mouse said, I won't. And the little red hen said, oh, then I must go and do it myself. So she did. Then the little red hen took a bowl and a big spoon and mixed butter and sugar and eggs and milk and flour. And she beat the dough and put it in three pans and put them in the oven. The cat sat by the oven door and waited. The rat sat by the oven door and sniffed. The mouse sat by the oven door and looked as if he were getting ready to nibble. When the cake was baked to a turn, the little red hen took it out of the oven and it smelled so delicious that the cat and the rat and the mouse frisked about the floor. It smelled so delicious that the old fox, far away in his den in the forest, and all the little kit foxes sniffed the air and said, what is that beautiful smell? The old fox said, It smells to me as if the little red hen is baking today. And pretty soon he took down the bag that hung by the door of the den and said to his wife, I think I'll go see the little red hen. Perhaps I can bring a nice fresh cake home for the kids. And perhaps I will bring the little red hen home too. She will make us a fine dinner. So put the pot on to boil and wait. and the old fox came out of the forest and loped along very softly toward the little red hen's house. In the meantime, the little red hen set the layers of cake on the table to cool, and then she took a bowl and made frosting. First, she spread the frosting on the first layer, all over very carefully. Then she put the second layer on top of that and frosted, all over very carefully. And then she put the third layer on top of that and frosted all over the whole cake very carefully. And it looked perfectly delicious. Then the little red hen said, now who will help me eat the cake? The cat said, I will. The rat said, I will. And the mouse said, I will. But the little red hen said, no, you won't. I'm going to eat it myself. Just then, the old fox put his head in the window. When the little red hen saw him, she was so frightened that she flew up to the top of the cupboard and hid behind the clock. The cat hid under the bed. The rat went into his big hole behind the stove. And the mouse went into her little hiding hole behind the door. The fox came in the kitchen and looked all around. Nobody home? He asked. But my, what a fine cake. I might as well eat it up. And he was about to gobble the cake when the little red hen flew down at him in a rage and tried to drive him away by flapping her wings and pecking at him. Then the old fox laughed, ha ha, and grabbed the little red hen and popped her in his sack and tied her up and went out of the house so fast that he forgot the cake. He loped along toward his den. But the sun was hot, and the fox had come a long way. And when he saw a shady tree by the roadside, he lay down to rest for a bit. And before he knew it, he had fallen asleep. As soon as the little red hen heard him snore, she took her little pair of scissors out of her apron pocket and snipped a hole in the bag just big enough to creep out of. When she was out, she quickly found a rock that weighed about as much as she did. and put it in the hole she had cut. Then she took her needle and thread and thimble and sewed up the hole. Then she ran toward home as fast as she could run. When the old fox woke from his nap, he grabbed the bag and started off home. He was in such a hurry to put the little red hen in the pot to boil that he didn't notice that it was a rock bouncing in the sack on his back instead of the little red hen. When he got to his den, the little kits ran out and said, oh, the father, he brought us the good cake. Then the fox remembered that he had forgotten to bring the cake. But he said, no, my dears, but I have something much better, a plump little red hen. And he opened the sack, and his wife took the lid off the boiling pot, and in he dropped the rock with a great splash. So then the old fox knew that the wise little red hen had outwitted him again. He was very cross, and the fox's family had no dinner at all that day. But the little red hen ran home across the fields, until she came to the little house, and there was the cake, safe and sound on the table. looking more delicious than ever. The cat heard her and came out from under the bed. The rat came out of his hole behind the stove. And the mouse came from behind the door. They were so glad to see their dear little red hen safe home again that they promised they would never be selfish and lazy anymore. So the little red hen forgave them and they were very happy and ate the cake all up. I'm really trying to think about what the moral of this story is because before I bought this book for myself and was just recalling the story from how I remembered my dad telling it, all my brain was focused on was how very much the little red hen does and the fact that nobody helps her. Now, as an adult, as I'm reading the full story and hearing the part about how, you know, the fox came and took her away and then she escaped and everyone was so relieved that she was okay, that she forgave them and they all lived happily ever after, that's a whole second layer of the story that surely plays into the bigger overarching takeaway. But still, I regularly have moments where I catch myself wallowing in pity or frustration and just feeling like I am the little red hen, the one that has to do it all and everyone else gets to benefit or enjoy the fruits of my labor. Obviously, that is not a good or helpful or even healthy attitude to have, But I still want to normalize it and I want to offer that especially if you are a high-functioning, anxious, perfectionist, people-pleaser mom like me, then you too probably resonate with this tendency of feeling like you're the only one, right? And then even though you want people to help, they don't know what to do or they don't do it up to your standards and it just can feel so exhausting. I always find it so strange that the thing that changes the situation and kind of fixes things here for the little red hen is the threat to her very existence, right? Is her potential loss and death at the hands of the fox. And then only after this near death experience does she decide to come back and just, you know, forego her, um, her former boundaries and let the cat, the rat and the mouse participate in enjoying the fruits of her labor. But at the same time, you have to think that the cat, the rat, and the mouse were made more aware of what would happen without the little red hen when there was the chance that she would be taken and eaten by the fox. And so maybe theoretically moving forward, they would have been more engaged and more willing to help. I don't know. My brain is clearly overthinking this. You probably have never pondered this story the way that I have. And it's just one of many, many signs that I am your classic, high-functioning, anxious person who is always looking for meaning where maybe there isn't any meant to be found. At the same time, this story sure resonates with me and I'm curious if it resonates with you too. We might have moments where we feel okay about it all or we have higher capacity so it doesn't feel like that big of a burden. But I want to offer that so many of our well-intentioned sacrifices are just enabling and entitling, not to mention perpetuating the problem. If we never give other people a chance to do these things, it'll always be on us. Yet the reason we don't ask for help or we don't insist that others pull more weight is incredibly counterintuitive and problematic. It's because you've built your identity around being the person who does things, fixes things, helps people, takes care of everyone. It's not as easy as just not doing the things or letting others step in to do them, because subconsciously, you've wired your identity around performing these roles. Who are you, if not the person who does XYZ? I know this isn't a conscious thought you're having, but I want to suggest that it is very much at the heart of why you continue trying to do it all. Because the thought of not doing it all and not having it all under your control throws you into an identity crisis. Remember, it is your brain's job to keep you alive, conserve energy, seek pleasure, and avoid pain. Breaking free of your old identity and your old default patterns is hard because it is so psychologically uncomfortable. And not just for you, but also for the people who rely on you. Because when you start to make changes and speak up and hold your boundaries or ask for more help, they will inevitably feel threatened. And then their response could provoke another perceived threat in your mind where your brain feels doubly threatened. First, by being unsure of who you even are, if not the person who does it all. And then second, because your desire to not do it all is making other people upset and then you don't feel safe in the midst of their negative emotions. Obviously, this is all so complicated and there's no one right answer. I am not trying to tell you what to do or how to necessarily interpret this story, but I sure mull it over all the time and I do catch myself fairly frequently Having that classic pity party of feeling like the little red hen who is always the only one doing it all, taking care of everybody else, and they just expect it, right? They have no appreciation, let alone any idea how much work actually goes in to keeping things running. I think at a minimum, we can give ourselves so much more credit and recognition, right? It should never be about doing things specifically to get seen or appreciated by other people. There are so many things that just need to be done. And surely part of our gift to the world, especially to our families, is doing the things that need doing without getting credit or without being appreciated. Motherhood is by its very nature the most thankless job you will ever have. We shouldn't do it to get thanks, if that makes sense. At the same time, it is absolutely okay to have limits. And asking for help doesn't make you weak. It actually is such a sign of strength and vulnerability. You have to be so brave to recognize that you are exhausting yourself. And then if you were to burn out, or even if you're just going through the motions and continuing to do things with that latent resentment building up inside, it's no good for anybody. It's just going to blow up and backfire and leave everyone worse off in the long run. Your homework for this episode is to think about the extent to which you identify with the little red hen. And if you do, how do you want things to be? Do you want to get more vocal about where you need help? Do you want to set more limits on what people are able to take from you or partake in with you without contributing and really being involved in the process? If you are tired of being the little red hen for your family, then I just want you to get creative and brainstorm two ways, just two ways, that you could do a little bit less and or delegate more to other people. Two simple ways that you could take a little bit of the load off of your shoulders and ask those around you to carry it for themselves. Stay tuned for next episode where I am going to be sharing so much more about the journey I have been on that has led me to the realization that what is going on for me in the present day is actually the result of these protective adaptations my nervous system took on from a young age. And I will underscore why it is so important for you to do this same deep inner work in order to ensure that you are modeling something completely different for your kids moving forward. Until then, remember nothing you do changes how wonderful and worthy you are. Have a great day. I know more than anyone how precious your time is, so the fact that you spent it listening to this podcast means the world. Make sure to subscribe, and if you got value out of this show, I would be so honored if you'd leave a review and share this episode with another busy mama who needs to hear it. We've got this.