The parental time out

July 27, 5:09 PMParenting Humor ExaminerAnnette van de Kamp

Six days without non-stop laundry (Okay, five-I waste one whole day catching up). Six days without snacks, juice boxes, and sibling rivalry. Six days of only running the dishwasher once a day, six days without Dora the Explorer, six days of enjoying an uncluttered house, no falling over Lego pieces, no frantic searches for a favorite toy…if it wasn’t for the overwhelming guilt I feel, I’d do this all the time.

What is there to feel guilty about anyway? The grandparents love having Isabella and Mendel all to themselves, without hovering parents, and the kids will enjoy every moment. I have been looking forward to having some me-time; I have a list of projects I simply cannot finish unless I am alone, and yet, now that I have what I wished for, I find myself strangely unfocused. Maybe I am too used to doing things machine-gun-fashion, I just don’t know what to do with all this free time. So I end up doing nothing.

Well, not nothing: I’m in the process of renovating both the bathroom and my daughter’s room. I spray painted my daughter’s bed, made two paintings for her, scraped off the wallpaper in the bathroom, did six loads of laundry, and organized the art supplies at my daughter’s school. I finished all the back to school shopping, cleaned out the fridge, and organized my kitchen cabinets. I washed and re-hung curtains. And yes, that is a pretty boring list. I’m not pleased about that.

As parents, we spend so much of our time doing what is expected of us. Some of that is driven by need: we are responsible for our kids; they can’t cook their own meals or drive themselves to school. We are grownups; we have to pay our taxes and mow our lawn, go for annual doctor check-ups and attend PTA meetings, watch the news and keep ourselves informed. We have to dress appropriately, and maintain good hygiene. Stop for red lights, use our turn signal, and be polite to others; society demands it of us.

While I don’t truly mind any of these things, I wonder: what, at the end of the day, do we do strictly for ourselves? Or is that a selfish question to ask? And is selfish automatically bad, or have we just been conditioned to believe that?

“Self’ish a. caring too much about one-self”, the dictionary tells us. That doesn’t sound very positive. Still, I think that for an adult with kids, it is important to define where the self is, in the middle of all that parenting. We’ll call it self-interest, instead of selfishness; it sounds better.

I can already see a downside to this week-without-kids thing. Way too much time to think. Luckily, by Friday, they’ll be back, and I won’t be able to finish a single thought, unless they’re asleep. At which point, I’ll be too tired.

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