Working Mum on Making Time For Kids While Exhausted
This Working Mum's Take on Parenting While "Exhausted" Actually Makes It Sound Wonderful
Not spending enough time with our children is such a common concern for working mums that it feels like a cliche. I often find myself lamenting that there's "never enough time" all too often. But when one fellow busy parent shared her perspective with Humans of New York, her words were refreshingly honest yet far more hopeful than anything I've said under my breath when I'm — pardon the cliche here — burning the candle from both ends.
"As a working parent, I'm always tired," she said on the Humans of New York Instagram page. "I don't have time to think. I speed walk wherever I go. When I finally get home in the evening, I just want to lie in bed and watch TV. But it's summer now. So the kids always want to do something. It's so tempting to tell them 'later,' or 'next week.' But I force myself to do it. I get out of the apartment and go to the park. Or the museum. Or the beach. Because no matter how I feel, I know there's such little, little time."
Next week, her oldest son is turning 10, and she can admit that it "all passed in the blink of an eye" while she was "working, working, working."
She continued: "Never enough hours in the day. Just trying to survive."
Unlike many of us, however, this woman refused to second-guess her worth.
"I was a good mother," she said. "I'm proud of that."
Her last lines, however, are what set this woman's perspective apart, and I hope they'll motivate you to power through those tough days as they're already helping me get through mine: "I always made time and space. Even if I was exhausted. Because I knew the time I was exhausted was the only time I had."
