Frazzled. That’s what a friend replied when I asked how she was feeling over coffee.
She explained why, and I could relate in the kind of way every parent can.
“I love them,” she said. “Of course I do. But when did it become all about them?”
For her, it’s taking her daughter swimming three times a week, often getting up at 5am. Then, between basketball, football and karate, her son needs ferried somewhere every day.
I told her I’m more often than not in a mild state of panic that I’ve not taken one of my boys to some training or event.
This often happens in Tesco in Wolverhampton, or Stoke. I’ll be looking for a meal deal on my lunch break when I notice I’ve missed 173 notifications on various parents’ groups and wonder if I’m having an actual panic attack.
When they’re not on some kind of pitch, it’s suddenly World Book Day again. There are three outfits to find and I’m wondering if the Batman costume they grew out of three years ago might do another turn.
And while we’re at it, when did the Easter Bunny become a thing?
When I was a kid, you thought you were lucky if you managed to avoid the dog poo while rolling your egg at Camperdown.
Now, parents are all over Instagram and Facebook with photographs of children so colourful and neat they look like cupcakes, their baskets brimming with treats from the Easter Bunny.
It is relentless.
When parenting meant going to the pub
Older generations have been known to say we take it too seriously – that we act like no one’s ever had a child before.
And occasionally I agree. There can be too much pandering and complaining and not enough ‘just getting on with it’.
I have a friend who told me the following was a fairly regular occurrence when he was a kid 30-plus years ago.
When he was around 10 years-old his parents used to drive to their favourite pub in the Ferry. There, they would leave him and his sister in the back seat of the car with a packet of crisps and a juice while they had a couple of drinks with their pals.
Social services would be called now, but it wasn’t out of the ordinary then.
Dads – not all, but some (I know this because some of them I was related to) – used to take their sons to play football, sometimes pretty serious league games, and not see a single ball being kicked because they were in the pub down the road.
A few years before he died, my dad, who was brought up in Charleston, told me he was offered his first cigarette at the age of five and from then became gradually hooked.
That’s so sad it’s almost unbearable.
Parenting needn’t just be about the kids
A lot of the changes that have happened in parenting are good, if it means kids are safer.
But somehow their timetables have become jam packed. And we, the parents, have become their taxis.
When you really look at all the activities they are doing, you have to ask how much time it leaves for us.
Have we lost the fun of a spur of the moment kickabout with our kids because they are going to so many organised events with people who are not us?
Maybe we should remember to keep living and learning ourselves.
There’s a cost of living crisis yet schools still sending the emails about world book day. Some folk are struggling to feed their kids without having to worry about dressing them up in a stupid costume
— Lynne (@Lynneontheradio) February 27, 2023
Like my pal, I couldn’t love mine more – but I am a bit frazzled.
And maybe we’re all in the same boat.
Maybe the shiny parents whose houses are visited by the Easter Bunny are gliding along on the surface like a swan, but paddling frantically underneath.
And maybe we should accept that life doesn’t have to be all about the kids.
Wouldn’t it be healthier, less frazzled, if we took a step back and remembered it’s for all of us? Grown-ups included.
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