Me: forgets pencil in another room. “Way to go you fucking worthless pile of garbage! How could anyone possibly love you, you’re so goddamn pathetic it’s a wonder you even remember to breathe.”
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
in what country do pizzas cost $30? edit: damn your pizzas are either huge or expensive, here in finland a standard pizza costs about 12€ and with 25€ you get heavenly pizza made with the best ingredients baked in a wood fired oven. And i thought food here was expensive
I live in nyc. You can get large plain pie for $18 from most places. Toppings are usually about $4 each.
But there are expensive places. At work we ordered some pies for an in-office event last week. The guy picked a fancy place where all the pies were at least $30.
I went to a place on the Oregon coast not that long ago that was selling large pizzas for $43. There was nothing special about the pizza, it was not in a particularly touristy area, I don’t know what they were thinking.
That’s what I thought. Imagine paying 30 bucks for a pizza in (I assume) the US and then be expected to give a six dollar tip. Brutal. I’d never order in.
Found ours in a parking lot, with her neck torn up to shreds, one of her toes broken, and a gash on one of her back legs. We also thought that she was well fed… she wasn’t. She was very skinny and pregnant.
Took thousands of dollars in vet bills, and about 11 months to heal her back up to full + 5 years to figure out that she has an autoimmune disease that causes her skin to flare up and become very itchy and uncomfortable. She will be on meds for the rest of her life + always wear a neck protection band and a shirt to keep her from tearing herself up again. It is all worth it though, because she is the sweetest little fur ball in existence. Worth every penny, all effort.
Mine had a similar situation with itchy skin with neck protections and everything, turns out it was flea allergy and just using revolution regularly fixed the problem altogether, I can’t recommend it enough. Revolution not only kill flea but it also combat the flea allergy.
My brother would go out to feed a cat who had recently given birth to some kittens on the side of his work’s building. One day he went out there and the mother cat and most of the kittens were gone except one little black and white kitten. So he ended up taking that one home and we’ve kept him all this time, a little over 13 years now.
When I moved out of my parents’ house, I told my brother how I felt lonely living there and he let me take that cat with me. He’s been with me ever since, just the two of us.
lemmybewholesome
Top
This magazine is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.