+34“The truth is, to be good parents, we need time to be people — not even good people,” Patrick Holloway writes.
“The truth is, to be good parents, we need time to be people — not even good people,” Patrick Holloway writes. “We need our own time.
Uninterrupted time. Even if it’s only a few hours a day. ” Summers are great, don’t get me wrong. This summer was particularly kind, dosing us all up with some vitamin D and ridiculous tan marks.
Big burnt heads all over the place. And the kids got to play outdoors without us parents shooing them out. There were water balloon fights, late-night outdoor dining, and long days at the beach. It all sounds lovely, and I’m sure for a lot of us it was exactly that.
But God, does it feel good getting my daughters’ schoolbags ready. I’m not an organised person at all but I found joy in checking the school list, calling out what we needed to my wife as she lined up rubbers and markers. Buying enough pencils and Pritt sticks to last the year, though somehow we’ll be trying to find them again come October.
It is expensive and a little stressful, and I’m never entirely sure what half the things on the stationery list are for but it means one thing — the summer is nearly over. It means a routine is coming back. It means I’ll have my own time back soon. Now, I love my daughters, have probably had the best summer ever with them.
But when they go back to school, I have exactly five hours and thirty minutes to myself again. It sounds like a lot, but as any parent knows, it isn’t. By the time the kitchen is organised and clothes are folded, and the place is hoovered, I have about two hours to myself to read and write, correct, judge, edit, whatever it is I have lined up.
Then it’s time to organise lunch and figure out what daily activities they have, and if I have time, I’ll get some exercise in. It’s not much, but over the summer months, I’ve missed it more than anything. I’ve missed finishing something without being interrupted. I’ve missed being able to read and get lost in the book, instead of rereading pages because I had to clean up another spill.
During the holidays, every task is done while listening for what is happening in another room. Silence is normally a bad sign. I write a paragraph, get asked for a snack, write another, break up an argument, and return to the first paragraph with no idea what I was going on about.
I have seen a lot of posts about how hard it is for kids to go back to school, lots of posts and stories showing how the parents will miss them. It’s all paraded in a shroud of eternal love and care, and I call bullsh*t. We all love our kids, we’ve all enjoyed the summer, but come on, we’re all secretly happy to see them walk back in the school gates and get a part of ourselves back again.
Of course, some children find the return difficult. There are new teachers, different classrooms and the worry of whether their friends will still be their friends after the summer. I acknowledge the fact that every child is different and therefore each return is individual. I know my daughters are nervous and excited, and I’ll worry about them because that’s what parents do.
But they are also ready. By the last week of August, they are bored of us and we are probably a little bored of them. We’ve done the beaches and playgrounds. We’ve watched enough films, maybe even the wrong ones.
We have reached the stage of the holidays when everyone needs something different to happen. Working from home, in any capacity, can be challenging. With kids, it becomes a small minefield, an endless barrage of compromise, and if I have to try and write while listening toone more time, I might just lose my mind.
I should note, I love working from home, and I love the freedom it gives me, and I also really enjoy being there for the girls, most of the time. But over this summer I’ve felt constantly torn, pulled in too many directions, and when I do have time to just sit and read, there is the big old ball of guilt.
It is hard to close a door and work when you can hear your children playing on the other side of it, particularly when you know the summer is short and they will not always want you around. That is the difficulty with working from home. You are there, so everyone assumes you are available. Sometimes you assume it yourself.
It is hard to close a door and work when you can hear your children playing on the other side of it, particularly when you know the summer is short and they will not always want you around. So you go outside, play the game, watch the dance or agree to another trip somewhere, then panic later because you haven’t done the work. Whatever you choose, it feels as though you should be doing the other thing.
And that is something that is born along with our children: the guilt. Constantly comparing ourselves to versions of parents that are shared online, and we fall short, because that is the point, right? That’s the whole point of social media—to feel less than you are so you try harder: join a gym you’ve followed, buy the clothes you’ve seen, go to the desired location. And I am in front of the line, every time.
And it’s the same with parenting. Videos showing how to do at-home activities, smiling families with slogans like. I mean, come on. Families don’t spend the whole summer smiling at one another.
Children complain at the beach. Parents argue while trying to fit everything into the car. A nice family walk can be ruined because someone’s sock feels strange. You can spend half an hour making a picnic and then be told nobody likes any of it.
There are lovely days, of course, but there are also long afternoons when you have run out of ideas and everyone is irritating everyone else. Six or eight weeks is a long time to keep children entertained, especially when you are also trying to work and stop the house from becoming completely unliveable. The final few days of August always have a strange feeling to them.
We’re still on holidays, but we’re checking school supplies and trying to get bedtime back to something reasonable. Every year we say we will start that process early. Every year they are still wide awake at ten o’clock the night before school. The schoolbags are lined up, the lunchboxes are ready and the shoes are sitting by the door.
Everyone is excited, though none of us will admit quite how much. September feels more like the beginning of the year to me than January ever does. January is too miserable for fresh starts. Nobody wants to change their life when it is dark at four in the afternoon and they are still eating leftover Christmas chocolate.
September is different. School starts again, work starts properly again and the days return to some sort of shape. We know where we have to be and when we have to be there. I can make plans without first having to find somebody to mind the children.
The things I miss are small. A quiet coffee. A jump into the sea. Sitting at my desk without somebody appearing beside me to ask if they can have another chocolate biscuit.
Playing three sets of tennis without it requiring a full family discussion. I want to put on my own music while I clean, but both speakers have been taken over by my girls, so it’s Taylor Swift or, and I must say I prefer the latter. Even cleaning the house is easier when nobody is following behind to undo it. None of this is particularly exciting, but after the summer it feels close enough.
So when it’s time for our kids to go back to school, can we, as parents, just be honest and say, thank f*ck for that! The truth is, to be good parents, we need time to be people, not even good people. We need time to be a friend, a husband, lover, reader, whatever. We need our own time.
Uninterrupted time. Even if it’s only a few hours a day. Because those five hours and thirty minutes give me something back. I can work without feeling that I am ignoring somebody.
I can meet a friend, go for a swim, play tennis, read a book or sit in a quiet house doing absolutely nothing. I can put on my own music. I can remember what I like when nobody else is asking me for anything.
Then, when the school day is over, I can collect my daughters and be happy to see them, ready to hear about what they did, who they sat beside and what happened at lunch. The freedom is small and never lasts long enough, but it is mine again. And God, I’m ready for it.
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