Reply to The screaming

Forum Index » Infants, Toddlers, & Preschoolers

Reply to "The screaming"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Y[b]our husband simply needs to come home and immediately go into dad-mode. He can't sit on his phone. His decompression time is on the way home from work[/b]. Even if that's just a walk down the staircase in the house. Can he take two of the kids for a walk around the block when he gets home? Then you can have one kid "helping" in the kitchen while you prep dinner. [/quote]

Was just reading through responses and this jumped out at me because YES, and also: so many men don't get this. My DH did this for years. He'd get home and he hated being immediately asked/expected to help with getting kids dinner, giving baths, tidying up rooms to get ready for bed, etc.

What he didn't understand was that (1) I didn't get any decompression time at all because I was going straight to daycare pickup from work and then straight home, and daycare was a 5 minute walk from work and we had an early pick-up time so I'd be hustling to get there. So yeah, no leisurely transition from work to mom mode.

And (2) decompression time can happen after kids are in bed if you are efficient and on top of things before then. The whole time I was doing evening routine, I'd be motivating myself with the thought of 7pm, when kids would be in bed and I could eat my own dinner and relax. It's not even late because little kids go to bed so early! DH would be dragging his feet on everything, postponing bath time by 15 minutes or staring at his phone instead of getting dinner on the table, and I'd be thinking "Every minute we postpone bedtime, the kids get grumpier and I lose out on relaxation time." He didn't understand that the routine existed to enable us to relax and decompress. He was being short sighted.

Now kids are older and it's different because we can actually relax with them after work some. They also go to bed later so it's no longer this question of trying to maximize adult time after their bedtime -- we have a more relaxed family time, eat dinner later, kids will even spend time playing on their own before we start bedtime routine.

But in my experience, ages 0-4 require you to really focus on that evening routine and prioritize your kids needs over your own until you can get them to bed. Because otherwise it's chaos. Kids that age will lose it if they are a little hungry or a little tired. This capacity improves with age but you can't expect a 2yo to roll with it if dinner is 30 minutes late or they are going to bed 30 minutes late. They just do not have the capacity.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics