Back when I was a toddler and my brother not much older, my parents were visiting relatives across town and so we were home alone for a bit.
I think, I missed my mommy or something. It must have been not enough of an emergency for us to call at our relatives.
Instead, we took the logical not-an-energency step, which is to say many, many steps, because we decided to walk across town to our relatives.
It’s a 20 minute walk with adult feet, so I imagine, it would have taken us at least twice as long.
And so many things could have gone wrong. From us just being barefoot, to someone calling the police, to our parents driving home in the meantime not knowing where we were, to just straight up kidnapping.
But not this time. We just rang at our relatives’ door out of the blue, with our parents still there. 🙃
I don’t personally remember this whole story, obviously, but I can’t imagine how else we could’ve just walked out. I guess, another possibility would be that only our mom was visiting the relatives and our dad was taking a mighty nap.
But well, my brother and I were apparently always well-behaved children. And we could’ve always phoned them, or rang at the door of an older lady living in the same house, or walked two streets over to our grandparents or three streets over to friends of the family.
Evidently, we even knew how to walk to our relatives across town, so I do feel like that would have been enough of a support network and at least my brother old enough, so that one could start trying to leave us home alone. You do have to start at some point…
I envy that relationship. My dad doesn’t even know my religious or political beliefs, let alone sharing a hobby. It’s not like we don’t talk, he just hears what he wants to hear, and he doesn’t want to hear anything where I know more than him (including my hobbies and my field)
I lost my dad in my 30s and I still want to ask him to build stuff with me. My 6 year old would have loved to too, so I’m trying to take better care of myself than my dad did, so we have a lot longer together.
Yeah but its like a cycle thing. Having tense clenched up muscles can make you feel more stressed and when you’re stressed you clench those muscles. So you can manually get a little break. You’ll still go right back to it if the root causes remain though.
Also Magnesium Glycinate supplements basically stop muscle clenching for me especially as a side effect from ADHD meds or other stims.
But also the roof of my mouth is the natural resting place for my tongue keeps me from clenching my jaw so you can’t listen to every silly tip.
People act like this isn’t science, like we don’t give medicine to people for well researched reasons for these exact things, like medicine is something they know more about by lying about it being “magic”
I could find none of it via google except maybe the clenched jaw. The vast majority of which are from sketchy health clinics pushing dumb shit to fleece rich people from their money.
Put your tongue wherever you want, keep your posture moving and in a comfortable position, and if you clench your jaw so hard you grind your teeth, then you have Bruxism, which is something entirely different you slack jawed sheep.
Want better stress relief? Quit doing coke. Quit drinking alcohol. Exercise. Eat better. And most of all, get sleep. If you can’t do any of those on your own, go to a doctor and get help for it.
I’d give anything for more of those moments. My son is 21 now and barely acknowledges me anymore. I hope he comes around and it’s just a phase but I have my doubts. So good call on playing legos. You have a limited number of those as a dad.
Cute but I can’t say I’d make that same move tbh. Kids are smart and can tell you’re upset just as much as you can tell they are. Granted I’m not a parent but I think I would have asked for 5-10 minutes so I could calm down and then make solid plans to play Lego as soon as I was done instead of forcing myself to play and then possibly getting frustrated at the kid just being a kid
Your kid doesn’t hear “I need a few minutes to deal with my human feelings,” they hear “daddy is mad and doesn’t want to play with me.” They don’t have the emotional intelligence yet to understand that you’re a person, not just the mythic figure of parent that they see.
This is why the trope of daddy taking a minute alone on the toilet is A Thing.
On the upside, you’d be surprised how often you can destress precisely by being a kid with your kid, playing Legos and cuddling. Being a dad is hard, but it’s awesome.
Just this morning my oldest daughter who is almost 4 asked me to go to the basement before school and I said I would turn on the light and get it ready for her, but Daddy wanted to say for a few minutes on the couch.
She said “Ok dad, here’s bun bun (her comfort animal) so you can snuggle and feel better”. It was so selfless I went with her anyway and she said “Did you know I love you, dad?” On the way down the stairs and it was great.
But she was totally emotionally intelligent enough to say “daddy isn’t feeling good, I’d like to help him” and I think that starts MUCH earlier than people think.
Every situation is different with these kids, for sure. I think the OP is a good one, because sometimes stewing in your own juices isn’t what you need, and all you need is a kid to say hey let’s build Legos. I’m tired all the time these days, we are worked to death, our kids demand constant attention, and while we absolutely all need time to ourselves, it’s also good to just buck up sometimes and build some Lego, at least for me it is, it brings me out of the funk. Sometimes I end up sitting there building nonsense after my kids have gotten bored.
I’m all about mental health and needing to figure your shit out yourself sometimes, but I also think sometimes you need a push to get the gears moving.
But yeah, if they come and say I’m bored, and I need a minute, you’re gonna have to figure your shit out. But if you have a project and some focus, maybe I need a little focus as well, just a distraction with purpose.
Emotional intelligence varies, though. My two-year-old is remarkably observant and has stopped to ask Mommy or Daddy “You okay?” more than once when one of us was letting our distress show through.
Me, as an autistic pre-schooler? Fuck no, in retrospective I was my parents’ worst nightmare until I started being able to piece together social cues and link them to cause and effect. I don’t think I started figuring that shit out well into elementary school.
You’re getting downvoted unfairly here. Yes, it’s the “right” choice to maximize the time with your kids when you can as those moments will go by faster than we think they will, but it’s also not the wrong choice to make sure you take care of yourself. Every parent is going to make their own decisions, and nobody’s “doing it wrong” as long as the child is reasonably happy and healthy (to the extent uncontrollable forces allow). We’re all just getting along here.
I hope you never plan on having kids. Kids come first, if you can’t put them before yourself and deal with your shit on your own time you’re only hurting them.
How would you feel if the person who’s watching them decided they couldn’t because they needed 10 minutes? It’s only acceptable for you since it’s your kid? Shit take.
There’s a wide distance between supervising a young child responsibly (which obviously must be done at all times) and engaging in play (which you should do when you can and you’ll be glad you did, but if you just don’t have it in you, it’s not a crime to sit quietly for a few minutes).
I don’t think that’s really comparable, a parent isn’t being paid, a babysitter can choose not to babysit. And besides, it really depends on what the kid’s asking to do. I’ve definitely been told I can’t do things when I was being babysat.
Parenting is a 24/7 job. You need to take your breaks while on the clock be everyone you’re never off the clock. Paying someone for childcare services is a job with a start and end time. You can take your breaks before or after. The expectations are different because the jobs are different.
Parenting isn’t a 24/7 job who’s told you that? Most people have partners and you get breaks when your kid is sleeping, at school, and being cared for by others. If you can’t do it, you should be paying someone so you can get your break. Not neglecting your kids.
It’s not different, people just use it as an excuse to be terrible to their kids.
I’m living through this right now. I don’t need anyone else to tell me anything. My partner and I alternate on childcare while the other person handles other household duties and day job duties. Our parents come by regularly to help out and we use that time to catch up on sleep as best as we can. Paying for childcare doesn’t make sense as it just negates most of one person’s income. If I’m going to be working anyway and not resting, I’d much rather put that energy towards my kid and have less money than be away but have sightly more money.
I can say that I have frequently gone through this very situation with my kids, where I’ve had to tell myself that I won’t be able to have this kind of time forever. And it’s not that I actually didn’t want to do it — I wanted to do be around my kid and see them be their wonderful self. I almost always would come away with something they did that brought me joy. It’s just that with young kids, there’s so much stuff to deal with all the time, you always wish you had a bit more time purely for yourself.
But it’s sort of like when you go on a big vacation, and you venture out and fill every day with activities and adventure. Maybe some mornings you feel like just watching TV at the hotel after so many days of activities, but you power through it because there are things you still want to do, and this vacation will be over before you know it.
Don’t listen to the haters. Children learn from their parents and appreciate the amount and QUALITY of the time spent with them. Five minutes to collect yourself and heal from whatever in hurting you is not only healthy for you, it’s a great example to your child. And then you get to give them 100% of your attention. Some groups don’t understand this and I think that’s where a lot of anxiety stems from. You don’t have to give all of yourself to someone to show you love them.
It’s probably the way I wrote it but yes this is exactly what I was getting after. My own personal experience would have benefitted from this kind of behavior from my parents
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