We have this ongoing predicament (well, yet ANOTHER impasse-type scenario) in our house. It’s called ‘time out’, or more aptly in our situation, time with-out! Now I don’t mean time out in the alternative to smacking interpretation of the term where the child is placed in a safe environment while he calms down and I do my mindfulness meditation so as not to drop him, Hansel and Gretel styles, in the middle of a remote mountain range. No, I mean complete respite; a weekend off every now and again, hell even a night every fortnight would replenish my serotonin levels and give me something to look forward to!
I know when my (now grown up) son was small, I was extremely fortunate to have a plethora of family members living in fairly close proximity who all delighted in having him over night regularly. To me this was how families operated. My sisters and I had grown up with extremely happy memories of weekends at our grandparents (and we have three sets of them...but that’s another story), our Aunties and Uncles, and of our cousins staying at our house too. 21 years later, deep in the Central Hawkes Bay countryside things are very, very different. Family is scarce, neighbours are miles away making it less likely (but not impossible) for ease of impromptu child-sharing/swapping, and the men (well, my partner...) firmly believe in just toughing it out, accepting your lot, and getting on with it. Well, needless to say, for this Auckland princess, this mindset just doesn’t cut it. Get real! Where does it say in any of the books that parenting has to be akin to a prison sentence? Yes it can be a bit like PD in that it has to be done regularly, you can’t just ignore it and hope it will go away, and it is something that you have to see right through to the end, or you will be in trouble. However, the advantage of PD over prison is that you are not incarcerated; you are not trapped, locked-in, physically constrained in such a way as to not have the freedom to make your own choices most of the time. So, you get my point. While parenting limits many of the options available to us, it also offers the perfect opportunity to move out of our comfort zone, think outside the square we grew up in, and most importantly, to really hone in on what is important to us as parents, individuals, and as couples.
This brings me back to the predicament my partner and I face. He of the grin and bear it school of thought and me of the, ohhh let’s share the love, phone his grandparents dogma...
I have to go now. Really have to think this through. Back tomorrow.
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