I am tired of my kids. And it's ok to admit that (#30)
I love my kids but daaaamn a break sounds real nice right now
One day my children will read this and say to me “dad, DAD! You got tired of us?!?”
And I will say “I love you with all my heart. You are without a doubt one of the best things that has ever happened to me. But yes, I was tired of your asses when I wrote that. And many other times too”.
I can usually tell when parenting has started to grind on me. It’s usually when I I find something irritating when it would normally make me chuckle. The other night we were putting the girls to bed when Megan and I discovered large splotches of white on one of our couches. We asked both girls what it was; Lily, the 6 year old, still working on mastering how to bullshit her parents stumbled around with “um, wow, what is that I don’t know what it is but hey, can I go put my PJs on and then I’ll get back to you?”. Nora, the 4 year old, still innocent to not really even know what lying is, confessed very slowly and methodically that they had attempted to build a fort and not knowing how to secure the fort to the couch decided to try glue.
As I type that, I can see how I would have normally reacted. I would have suppressed a laugh, calming lectured them on how Elmer’s Glue is not the adhesive of choice for fastening blankets to couches, and then asked them to clean it up.
Instead, I nearly reacted with “OK FUCK THIS NOISE EVERYONE IS GOING TO TIME OUT FOREVER”.
I am fortunate to be married to someone who can sniff out when my normally calm demeanor is replaced with the angst of a man who’s spent way too much time with his kids the past 2 months. “TJ, why don’t you head downstairs. I’ll put the girls to bed.”
I wasn’t tired of being a parent.
I wasn’t thinking to myself “well damn, maybe I shouldn’t have gotten into this whole Dad thing in the first place”.
And I definitely wasn’t thinking “my kids are super assholes how am I gonna ever tolerate them”
I was thinking in that moment in time I was tired of my kids. And I think we should normalize saying that.
The social media era is a weird one for parents. If you trust Instagram stories, facebook, and Tik Tok, you are lead to believe that children are a grace from God, the most wonderful thing of all time, and that if you’re not a perfect parent, nice job cuz you done f’d up.
The reality is so much more nuanced than that. Especially during the holidays. There’s the mental fatigue of dealing with Santa (or whatever), that wild ass Elf on the Shelf running around the house each day, buying presents, making sure they’re the right presents, wrapping the presents, and then fixing those presents when they inevitably break on December 26th.
But there’s also seeing the joy in your kids’ eyes when they meet Santa, the disbelief that the Elf can actually climb onto the tree into some goofy precarious position, and the glee when they open up those roller skates that they really really really wanted.
Basically what I’m saying is it’s exhausting. Fun and unbelievably rewarding! But exhausting. And after thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, numerous snow days, and a variety of other things going on in our lives, I’ve spent more time with my children in the last few months than I did on our 4 month road trip and, well, I’m tired of those little rascals.
And you know what? It’s ok to admit it. My break from my children will come in a few weeks when I travel to South America for work. I’ll get to sit in a conference room for a few days, wander some rural area for a few days, and not have to worry about what my children are trying to glue together the entire time. It’ll be great. And by day 3 i’ll be ready to get home to them.