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I got a mail from an old old friend whose son recently hit the twos. He described an affect I am all too familiar with that I want to quote here for posterity...
"...recently I've been in one of those periods where I experience being with [my son] as knuckling under to a demented tyrant's insane demands for ten hours a day, rather than (at the other pole of being) getting to play in sandboxes all the time."
It's really not popular to say this, but I don't like being a parent all the time. I get really sick of it, I wish I could just leave him in a day care and go get my hair done, go have coffee with a friend, go have a real date with my husband. If I manage to do these things I end up feeling guilty somehow like I am avoiding my responsibility, or not treasuring it properly, that I should always want to feel constant devotion to my son.
And it's not to say I don't because obviously if I didn't I wouldn't have the guilt, I'd just go do that stuff, screw him, lalalala....
Lately I can't walk away at all, and it's a problem. He's still very stressed from the move, or that's what I keep telling myself- it's a phase, it's this it's that, it's not that he just hates us because we suck. Hey, it's fair to say because if *I* were a 2 year old, from my perspective, I *would* hate me because I *do* suck... I don't understand a word he says, I don't give him what he wants when he wants it, we never do what he wants to (in his estimation) and I never have the stuff he wants to eat since all he really wants to eat is ice cream sandwiches. I also won't let him watch television 24 hrs a day, and watch it with him, what he wants to watch when he wants to (which is always Thomas the Tank Engine, or Toy Story, though it is also sometimes Spirited Away which I will happily watch.) I won't carry him around everywhere we go so he can spend his day with his hand down my shirt since we don't nurse anymore. I won't let him stay at the park without his mittens on until his hands bleed, and I won't spend my entire day getting on and off subway trains... If I were him I'd have a hard time looking me in the eye too...
Until this time is over I feel like I can't win- he's got to learn to talk, he's got to learn to listen and attempt to understand what I am trying to tell him, and if not then ask me for clarification. Until then it's all on me, whether I can take it and suck it up and manage to smile through it... I try to make little things fun, but when you're the tyrannical overlord it all just seems like corporate whitewash to a toddler...
Be kind to a parent near you today- take them a magazine, have an adult conversation with them, they may not realize they desperately need it, but they do...
"...recently I've been in one of those periods where I experience being with [my son] as knuckling under to a demented tyrant's insane demands for ten hours a day, rather than (at the other pole of being) getting to play in sandboxes all the time."
It's really not popular to say this, but I don't like being a parent all the time. I get really sick of it, I wish I could just leave him in a day care and go get my hair done, go have coffee with a friend, go have a real date with my husband. If I manage to do these things I end up feeling guilty somehow like I am avoiding my responsibility, or not treasuring it properly, that I should always want to feel constant devotion to my son.
And it's not to say I don't because obviously if I didn't I wouldn't have the guilt, I'd just go do that stuff, screw him, lalalala....
Lately I can't walk away at all, and it's a problem. He's still very stressed from the move, or that's what I keep telling myself- it's a phase, it's this it's that, it's not that he just hates us because we suck. Hey, it's fair to say because if *I* were a 2 year old, from my perspective, I *would* hate me because I *do* suck... I don't understand a word he says, I don't give him what he wants when he wants it, we never do what he wants to (in his estimation) and I never have the stuff he wants to eat since all he really wants to eat is ice cream sandwiches. I also won't let him watch television 24 hrs a day, and watch it with him, what he wants to watch when he wants to (which is always Thomas the Tank Engine, or Toy Story, though it is also sometimes Spirited Away which I will happily watch.) I won't carry him around everywhere we go so he can spend his day with his hand down my shirt since we don't nurse anymore. I won't let him stay at the park without his mittens on until his hands bleed, and I won't spend my entire day getting on and off subway trains... If I were him I'd have a hard time looking me in the eye too...
Until this time is over I feel like I can't win- he's got to learn to talk, he's got to learn to listen and attempt to understand what I am trying to tell him, and if not then ask me for clarification. Until then it's all on me, whether I can take it and suck it up and manage to smile through it... I try to make little things fun, but when you're the tyrannical overlord it all just seems like corporate whitewash to a toddler...
Be kind to a parent near you today- take them a magazine, have an adult conversation with them, they may not realize they desperately need it, but they do...
