Posted on 07/26/2006 7:17:10 AM PDT by carlo3b
Sorry, but my children bore me to death!
by HELEN KIRWAN-TAYLOLR, Daily Mail 08:00am 26th July 2006It's the start of the summer holidays, when millions of mothers despair at how to entertain their children for the next six weeks. What none of them dare say is that they would rather their children were still at school or, frankly, anywhere else. Helen Kirwan-Taylor, a 42-year-old writer, lives in Notting Hill, West London, with her businessman husband Charles and their sons Constantin, 12, and Ivan, ten. Here, she argues provocatively that modern women must not be enslaved by their children.
The lies started when my eldest son was less than ten months old.
Invitations to attend a child's birthday party or, worse, a singalong session were met with the same refrain: 'I would love to but I just can't spare the time.'
The nanny was dispatched in my place, and almost always returned complaining that my son had been singled out for pitiful stares by the other mothers.
(snip) Kids are supposed to be fulfilling, life-changing, life-enhancing fun: why was my attitude towards them so different?While all my girlfriends were dropping important careers and occupying their afternoons with cake baking, I was begging the nanny to stay on, at least until she had read my two a bedtime story. What kind of mother hates reading bedtime stories? A bad mother, that's who, and a mother who is bored rigid by her children.
(snip) Am I a lazy, superficial person because I don't enjoy packing up their sports kit, or making their lunch, or sitting through coffee mornings with other mothers discussing how Mr Science (I can't remember most of the teachers' names) said such and such to Little Johnny and should we all complain to the headmaster.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Yeah, there's a happy medium between this woman's apparent complete indifference to her children (if she's not just being hyperbolic for the sake of stirring the pot), and today's tendency for parents to live exclusively for their children's fulfilment. When you spend all your free time shuttling children to and from various structured activities, you've maybe gone too far in that direction. When children decide the menu for every meal, you've gone too far. When you feel the need to bring your children with you to every single social event, including those clearly intended for adults, like a "stag and doe" party, you've gone too far.
I suspect there have always been people who became parents but found that they really didn't like children or parenting. If you had the money you could contract out your child rearing to a nanny or governess, and many people sent their children away to boarding schools (particularly among the upper class of England, who have long put their own desires above that of their children. Decent adults have come from homes where there wasn't a lot of parental love. As I say, there must be happy medium between these extremes.
LOL.........so can I!
Children are the new "bling" in some groups!
"They stopped asking me to take them to the park (how tedious) years ago. But now when I try to entertain them and say: 'Why don't we get out the Monopoly board?' they simply look at me woefully and sigh: 'Don't bother, Mum, you'll just get bored.'"
Oops. The mother will not be included in the teen and adult years as they grow up. They already know nothing they do will be of interest to her.
The only thing wrong today with parents is that they do not give their children enough real responsibility. Being child-centered does not mean acquiesing to the child. It means evaluating and nurturing and then demanding the child grow up.
This dear's parents did not demand she grow up.
My grown children are an amazimg lot, especially around the dinner table when all are home. Brilliant conversationalists on many topics and accomplished in their fields.
So sorry this girl is so shallow.
when my husband would come home from work , and I was home with the baby, I always felt that I had something to tell him what the baby said, but realized that the baby didn't even talk yet.....such is the communication a baby can give...
It will never happen .. Once they start, they never stop *L*
"Plus the fact the streets are no longer safe, so kids have to be ferried everywhere in cars, find summer camps for them, HUGE amount of time in after-school activities -- Mom can't just let them run out of the door to play kick-the-can like we did when I was a kid."
Of course statistics show that, despite perceptions, in most places the streets today aren't really any more dangerous than they were when I was a child.
I didn't take your posts to mean you don't enjoy your children, not in the least. Like you, my husband and I got married late. Our daughter is 8, he's 51 and I'm about to turn 46.
I'm fine with just her, and her friend from down the road........anymore kids around and I literally freeze up. I can't handle it.
You and your wife are blessed, that sounds like a horrific time she went through.
I felt the same way when I read that. Little Peter needs her more than FNC. And she has another older son (Jamie?), I believe that could use some extra attention too. NO job is worth leaving the little ones. I waited years until my own children were in school before returning to teaching...a job which coincided pretty well w/their school hours.
The best days of raising children were, for me, the days of summer. The State takes control of our children for the rest of the year. Summer was the time when I could be with my children more, and teach them more important things than what is taught in the classroom. If there had been homeschooling back then, I would have cheerfully kept my children out of the government's clutching socialistic hands.
Ahhh, but those were the good old days, when mothers could stay home and be mothers. Thanks to socialism and the higher taxes we pay for it, some mothers have to leave their children and go to work. I feel so sorry for those children.
"I'm fine with just her, and her friend from down the road........anymore kids around and I literally freeze up. I can't handle it."
Don't berate yourself. I have a passel of them and while I love my own, I am a nervous wreck around other people's children, so much so that my grandneice commented that one would think I was childless.
Just a matter of temperament.
You know, sometimes it's hard to see our children as people and not just little extensions of ourselves. My children are much younger than yours (8 and almost 10).
I recently had one of thse sublime moments you never forget. My children were talking (for once, not fighting), and they hadn't seen me yet, so I just stood and listened. Their conversation was so adult sounding - so intellegent. Here was my artistic daughter, making statements that appealed to emotion; here was my very logical son, appealing to common sense.
All I could say to myself was "wow". It was my way of saying, "Thank you God. Thank you for letting me take a step back and see the people they are growing up to be. I like them. No, I LOVE them. Thank you for letting me have them in my house for 20 or so years. Wow."
Of course, then my son pulled my daughter's hair, and the moment was gone. But it was glorious while it lasted, and I'll never forget it.
Tell me about it!!!!!!!!
I swear she just loves hearing the sound of her own voice..........she never stops. She's on a kick at the moment where she is reading all my gardening books....I know more about bugs than I ever cared or needed to know. she quotes from the books verbatim, drives me nuts!!!!
For me, it was scary. I think there is a lot of tripe out there about 'Well, if I have the baby, once I put the baby in daddy's arms, he'll grow to love it.'
I don't think its true for either parent, as evidenced by this woman's musings on the subject. I think the whole disenchantment with raising children is something more commonly shared as a sentiment, but not spoken about, than we'd like to contemplate.
I will tell you that children are so far beyond worth it that I now have forgotten almost completely the frame of mind of the man that actually had to make that choice. It is impossible for me, however, to forget that I consciously made a decision. I think all parents do, but to the extent that they can point to a moment in time where they made that decision is questionable.
As I write this, Andrea Yates was found not-guilty by reason of insanity for drowning her five children. It just now was announced on Fox at 10:09 AM pacific.
'Their demand for external support is enormous,' says Kati St Clair. 'They enter the real world totally ill-prepared. You damage a child just as much by giving them extreme attention as you do by ignoring them altogether. Both are forms of abuse.'
Flame away but this part of the article is true.
EXACTLY.
The girl down the road, and even her younger sister who is just a toddler, are fine for me. I've spent a lot of time with both of those girls with their mom around, who is a good friend of mine, and so I'm comfortable having both in my charge when needed.
I can't do chaperoning of school or girl scout trips, I'm a wreck around that many little kids. Teenagers I can deal with a whole passel of them, but not the under 10 crowd.
WOW!!!!!!!!!!
What an awesome story.
One the author of the diatribe that started this thread would not understand in the least.
Feminazis will be asking her to talk, write articles, books and generally kiss her rear.
I just saw a yuppie mom with one of those one of those $500 jogging strollers at our local walking path around a lake.
This mom had upped the ante : She was pushing her ~4 yr old boy in the stroller -- while rollerblading at high speed.
I have to say, the kid looked miserable. Every pass around the lake that I saw them, he continued to look miserable. He didn't even smile at the adorable labrador retriever I was walking, as most kids in strollers do.
Finally, the last turn around the lake, the mom-on-skates and boy reappeared, but this time the $500 stroller had vanished (packed into a parked SUV), and boy was riding a little bicycle ahead of mom. This time he looked much happier.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.