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As much as I don\u2019t like to admit it, I\u2019ve been struggling lately in my life as a dad.\u00a0 I feel like my patience is at an all-time low and just about everything my kids are doing lately is just pissing me off, mostly on account of the colossal amounts of escalating defiance and just plain lack of listening that\u2019s going on with my four and three year old daughters.<\/span><\/p>\n Everything from wake-up time, free play time, quiet time, and especially bedtime are these monumental conflicts where I feel my disposition dissolving all the time, and I just end up in a state of agitation, annoyance, anger or all the above.\u00a0 I don\u2019t like it one bit, but I can\u2019t deny the fact that I\u2019m losing my cool over things at a very frequent clip, and I\u2019m hoping that this is just a stage of life given the ages of my kids, and this will eventually pass and eventually emerge in a state of being that\u2019s not as chaotic, not as frustrating, and not as resulting me being pissed off all the time.<\/span><\/p>\n Then again, the whole notion that challenging times will just pass doesn\u2019t change the fact that time is passing, and then I struggle about that<\/em> notion that I\u2019m letting formative kid years of my children\u2019s lives pass, while mostly in dour moods, which then makes me feel bad about that instead.<\/span><\/p>\n There\u2019s actually a part of me that dreads the weekends lately, because there\u2019s usually a lot of time in which I\u2019m on dad duty alone with the kids, and I don\u2019t always know what to do with them.\u00a0 And the difference is now from when they were 2 and 1 and 3 and 2, is a whole lot more mobility, a whole lot more freedom to roam in the house, and most prevalently, a whole lot more intelligent.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n My kids are pretty smart, and are seemingly endlessly testing boundaries and limits, and doing just about everything that I\u2019m please asking them to not do, they hardly ever listen, and I\u2019m just left exasperated, fried and burned out on trying to figure out how to keep them occupied without having to resort to television, going outside because it\u2019s been cold as fuck lately or something that results in a colossal mess that will make me want to slit my wrists.<\/span><\/p>\n Mornings have been challenging lately, because #1 has been deciding to wake up earlier than our routine generally is, and lots of mornings, she just bangs on the door and walls and makes a lot of racket that runs the risk of waking up her sister or others in the house.\u00a0 I\u2019m usually not done with making breakfast, and I\u2019m already aggravated at knowing there\u2019s a clock over my head at needing to get shit done lest she tornadoes up her room, and that becomes one more task on my endless list of responsibilities.<\/span><\/p>\n There\u2019s like a 75% chance that #2 will either: be pissed upon waking up and melt down.\u00a0 Be pissed at the top of the stairs and refuse to come downstairs and refuse to be carried downstairs, and then melt down.\u00a0 Be unhappy with what I\u2019ve made for breakfast, refuse to eat and then melt down.\u00a0 Or any combination, if not all of the above.\u00a0 I\u2019ve gotten to the point where I don\u2019t even bother to try and console beyond an initial attempt because she won\u2019t communicate why she\u2019s upset, and I just give up and start reading books to #1 who rarely has an issue with breakfast.<\/span><\/p>\n But bedtimes, they have become a vastly different type of hell for me on the daily, and frankly have become my least favorite part of every single day as of late.\u00a0 You\u2019d think that I\u2019d be doing cartwheels at the idea of putting the kids down for the night, so I can enjoy my 1-2 hours of freedom.\u00a0 But the defiance, having to wrangle and chase down the kids, get them bathed, teeth brushed, dressed and prepped, even before we get into their rooms for bedtime stories.\u00a0 It\u2019s like a last boss battle every single day, all for a payoff of the pithy 1-2 hours of freedom I get to have these days, and usually the first hour of my paltry me time is really spent decompressing as well as doing cleaning and prep-work for the next day, before I can really turn everything off and try and relax with what little time I\u2019m afforded.<\/span><\/p>\n More than likely, I\u2019m just at my burnout point again.\u00a0 I haven\u2019t really had a real break from being on dad duty in a while; I know I had a kid-free weekend a month ago, but that was away from home, mostly sequestered inside a cabin as a blizzard ravaged the North Carolina mountains, and everyone got sick.\u00a0 We had to make several long drives before and after in short order, only to come home where everyone was sick, and frankly when a break is structured like that, it\u2019s hardly a break at all.<\/span><\/p>\n But it just sucks.\u00a0 I don\u2019t like where I\u2019m at right now, with how perpetually pissed off I am, with parenting.\u00a0 My kids deserve better than angry dad all the time, and I wish parenting could just alleviate the pressure just a little bit off my throat to where it doesn\u2019t feel like such an exasperating chore all the time, and more stuff I should be enjoying and relishing in spending time and watching my kids grow and develop.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As much as I don\u2019t like to admit it, I\u2019ve been struggling lately in my life as a dad.\u00a0 I feel like my patience is at an all-time low and just about everything my kids are doing lately is just pissing me off, mostly on account of the colossal amounts of escalating defiance and just … Continue reading Dad Brog (#147): Parenting will never be easy, vol. 978<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[36,193,192,83,105],"class_list":["post-50434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-angst","tag-dad","tag-kids","tag-observations","tag-rage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50434"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50434\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50436,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50434\/revisions\/50436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}