I know I am late chiming in on this one, but I just had to say a few words about the Daily Mail column by Helen Kirwan-Taylor in which she admits that she is bored by all things mommy.
If you haven’t read the actual piece yet, which has already been blogged about ad infinitum, you really should take the time to read it.
At first, I thought that this must be hyperbole. She details how she would send the nanny to take her kid to birthday parties and instead go out and shop or have her highlights done. I know that kid activities can become tedious, but this woman does not even engage occasionally, the way the piece is written.
Unfortunately, I do not think it was an exaggeration.
Not only does she not do birthday parties, but she goes on.
My children have got used to my disappearing to the gym when they’re doing their prep (how boring to learn something you never wanted to learn in the first place).
They know better than to expect me to sit through a cricket match, and they’ve completely given up on expecting me to spend school holidays taking them to museums or enjoying the latest cinema block-boster alongside them.
Then follows later with,
Research tells us that mothers drink the most when they have young children. Is that because talking to anyone under the age of ten requires some sort of lobotomy?
Of course, she notes that a psychotherapist has vindicated her,
Psychotherapist Kati St Clair has listened to the frustrations of scores of mothers. ‘Women now feel great pressure to enjoy their children at all times,’ she says. ‘The truth is, a lot of it is plain tedium. It’s very unlikely that a mother doesn’t love her child, but it can be very dull. Still, it takes a brave woman to admit that.’
She goes on to cite some research that she feels backs her up, including
Research increasingly shows that child-centred parenting is creating a generation of narcissistic children who cannot function independently.
and
Sometimes, apparently, the best thing parents can do for their children is to let them be bored.
And concludes from that
This, of course, makes mothers like me - who love their children but refuse to cater to their every whim - feel vindicated. By sticking to our guns, we have unwittingly created children who can do things like make up stories (very few kids can any more).
And
Because I have categorically said: ‘I am not a waitress, a driver or a cleaner,’ my children have learned to put away their plates and tidy up their rooms.
It’s so nice that Ms. Kirwan-Taylor is able to sleep at night by deluding herself this way, but in reality what she is doing goes far beyond making her kids self-reliant.
My children put away their plates and tidy up their rooms, too. (And vacuum, and wash the walls, and empty the dishwasher, and take out the recycling.) My children get bored and I make them entertain themselves (have you noticed the frequently updated blogs?). My children can make up stories. In fact, Painter won runner-up in the Reading Rainbow Young Writers and Illustrators Contest this past year.
I also attend birthday parties, go to all of their soccer games, and take them to the movies (or rather watch movies at home since we rarely can afford the theater). I read bedtime stories, daytime stories, draw with them, make Lego structures, play street hockey and 500 ball, play cards, make cookies together, take them to the park, and just hang out. And all of that was before I homeschooled! (I also did most of that stuff when I worked full-time.)
I love my children and refuse to cater to their every whim, too. They spend two hours in individual quiet time, IQT as we call it, every day, so I can have Me Time. That is not including my blog time or the time I spend reading the paper. I hardly center my life on their interests. The difference is that I do spend time involved in their interests, even if it does bore me at times.
That is what you do when you love someone (when you are not a self-centered). I cannot tell you how many hours I have spent bored almost to tears listening to my husband go on about his latest martial arts interest or the latest Linux distro.
And don’t you think he ever gets sick of hearing about politics all of the time, or the latest post on PHAT Mommy, or how many Weight Watchers Points my lunch was? But he listens and so do I because we love each other. I know his interests are important to him, so they are important to me, even if they are not always interesting to me.
This is why I find this piece so…well, sad. The saddest part is that her kids have given up on ever having a mother who wants to spend time with them.
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.’
How right they are.
