Time for taboo! I prefer to work than to play with my kids… 👶👩👩👧👦
I love my children, I really do! But to be completely honest, I really don’t enjoy parenting. Being a parent doesn’t make me feel fulfill in anyway and although I think my kids are fantastic and I love them unconditionally, I’d often rather work than play with them. 🏢
Am I allowed to say this out loud?
I have two children with my wife. 👩👩👧👦 Our oldest is almost 5 and our youngest will turn 3 in February. On this Sunday morning, as I draft this post, the kids are playing while my wife is sleeping. As I’m watching them play, I think how wonderful they are but also how being a parent is hard and definitely not my calling. I’m not bad at it, but this is definitely not my life’s purpose or the romanticized version of being a mother movies I’ve shown me. Parenting is something I do because I have kids and they need me to do so.
When that is said, I admit humbly that I would much rather work than play with my kids and this is not a one off feeling but a recurring one. Am I a bad parent?
I’m sure many others feel the same way, but I admit that my own guilt for feeling such detachment hunts me often.
So I try my hardest to be a parent and to be kind to myself. It’s ok not to feel like I have found my life’s purpose in my children and I will continue to strive to feel purpose at work and elsewhere as that is what fulfill me most…
