Reply to How much of your daily life revolves around your kids?

Forum Index » General Parenting Discussion

Reply to "How much of your daily life revolves around your kids?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My kids are younger, and as others here have pointed out, apparently it gets worse as they age. I also only have two, though we're planning a third, so maybe it's the third that will make this untenable but:

But I don't feel this way, and I think it's because my husband and I carve out frequent, regular, fairly lengthly times when one of us is 100% in charge of both kids and the other can do whatever. For us, it's a half a weekend day almost every weekend, each (either until 2pm if you've got a morning off, or after 2pm if you've got an evening off). That still gives us a full day for family time, or to go off each with one kid if we want. Plus, two weeknights a month off for each of us. (We also do regular date nights together, but that's usually after the kids go to bed, easier/cheaper to find sitters).

So, sometimes I legit sleep until noon and read or watch TV in bed until 2pm. Sometimes, I leave at 2pm, go get a massage, meet up with a friend, get drinks, have a leisurely dinner, then go see a movie. Sometimes I spend a bunch of time crafting (my primary hobby). Happy hours. Time with friends. Parties. Whatever.

Don't get me wrong, it's HARD to be 100% in charge of the kids for such a large stretch of time, and we've been doing this since they were 2.5 and 6 months old, when it was BRUTAL to do the end of the day/dinner/bedtime routine solo or to have to juggle a whole morning. But it's SO worth it to have the downtime, and honestly, as we forced ourselves to do it, we got better and better at it, and it's gotten easier and easier to handle them together as they aged. They're now 2 and 4 and it's NBD at this point.

Now obviously you need a true, solid partnership and both parents on board (there was a post recently from a woman with a similar setup where it sounded like there were a LOT of issues and resentment). But for us, it's such a game changer.

Oh, and the first time you try it, the person in charge of the kids will be like THAT WAS SO HARD I'M EXHAUSTED and the person who had free time will be like "I don't even think I used the time well, I just felt so weird and off, what do I even like to do??" and so it's easy to give up, but push past that! Find yourself again! So worth it.

Oh, and yeah, the rest of the time, basically every minute revolves around the kids. [/quote]

Ok, so your point is that you get one morning off a week and the rest of your time revolves around the kids?

That's really not any different than what anyone else in the thread is saying. Also, be real with yourself: when you have your morning off, do you really not think about your kids at all? Because my DH and I give each other time off quite a bit (more than one morning a week) but realistically, I still dedicate some of that time to kids even though I'm not actually with them. Even if I'm sitting in a coffee shop reading a book or meeting up with a friend for drinks, my kids are truly never that far from my mind.

Yes, time for yourself is important, but the truth is that parenting is very consuming and that's not a personal moral failing. That's how parenting is structured these days. That's what it takes.[/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