Q. A physician, I am presently staying home with my two-year old. Much of the time I feel exhausted or as if I’m going nuts. No one talked about this in medical school. Any suggestions?

A. Parenting a 2-year-old is energy intensive at best. In addition, your current home-making activities may not match what your brain does most easily. For example, parenting activities draw heavily on functions housed in the posterior lobes of the cerebrum: nurturing, teaching, encouraging, counseling, disciplining, providing opportunities for spiritual growth, stimulating an interest in reading/music, handling activities of everyday living, and so on.

Many physicians, on the other hand, have a biochemical preference for processing information in one of the two frontal lobes. As a stay-at-home mom, you may be spending large amounts of time on activities that require a greater expenditure of brain energy and, at the same time, be missing the more frontal-thinking challenges you experienced when practicing medicine.

It might be helpful to explore how you can combine both of these careers. Is there any option for you to work part-time as a physician? Or what can you do that will stimulate your brain on an adult / professional level?