About twenty minutes into a paediatric appointment I usually ask how you are sleeping. Most people look a bit startled. We are here about my kid, not me.
We are. I still want to know.
Some of it is practical. You are the one who will be doing this. If the plan involves cooking differently, or a new bedtime routine, or remembering a herbal mix twice a day, it has to fit into a life that already has no room in it. A plan that assumes you have spare capacity is a plan that lasts nine days. I would rather build something smaller that actually happens.
Some of it is that households run on shared rhythms. Meals, sleep, stress, the general temperature of the house. When one person's sleep is wrecked, everyone else's tends to follow. Working on a child's sleep in a house where nobody is sleeping is very hard going.
And some of it is that you have often been going for years without anyone asking. Parents of children with eczema, or reflux, or a nervous system that runs hot, are frequently exhausted in a way that has quietly become normal to them. You are not being precious if you are tired. You have been on duty for a very long time.
I am not going to hijack your child's appointment and turn it into an appointment about you. That is a separate conversation and, if you want it, a separate booking.
But I will ask. And if the answer is that you are running on fumes, that is useful clinical information, not a confession.
Because you matter too. Not as a nice line at the bottom of a website, but as part of how this actually works.