Just walked out on kids

"do NOT let your kids think you're not coming back"

Absolutely. How anyone can disagree with this is mind-boggling.

It's far from saying you have to behave perfectly. But there's a line!

It takes me back and brings me out in a sweat but it’s not forever. I used to just roll my eyes at the parents who pretended their little darlings were not arguing fist fighting all day … or many days of holidays …. In town when my eldest heard a sickly sweet voice from a mother talking to her children .. he said “that’s not normal is it Mum “? 😂😂my boys are in their 30s and we have 5 beautiful grandsons between them .. eldest age 7 … they fight enough as it is atm .. ( although eldest lads boys are 4 and 1 so … it’s not started yet 😂… and another tip Don’t take teens on holiday unless you can leave them with trusted close family 😁They don’t want to be with you.. fact and it’s an utter waste of time and money. You’re not strange but just find another safety valve if you can. It’s totally normal and if any other parent says theyeve not got children like that then A. They’re lying or B. They don’t look after them all day or hardly at all 👍

'Sanctimummy' is a great word, not heard it before. I'll definitely be using that in the future!

My mum did this too, probably when I was a similar age actually. I was absolutely terrified that she wasn't going to come back, and that it would be my fault. From then onwards, I was so scared of doing anything wrong in case she left again.

OP, it's fine to need some time out. But do NOT let your kids think you're not coming back. They need to know that you need some quiet time to yourself, and that you will be back later.

Bickering is normal with kids. Did you not argue with your siblings? There's little you can do about it.

Ah my two love to fight over every tiny thing sometimes and it really ruins a lot of potentially nice times. So much so I didn’t want to book a holiday for this year because what is the point of making all the effort for them to have a nice time when they are happy to just argue over nothing. I always think I could understand if it their dad and I modelled the behaviour but we don’t! We very rarely argue.
I’ve not got any magic wand advice but what you have done is what we do (talk it through explain it is unacceptable, I’m also much quicker to nip it in the bud now as is their dad.)

Anyway, we’ve all been pushed to our limits from time to time and no harm has been done, hopefully they will get the message!

It can become overwhelming at times.

Are you being firm on the sleep routine? Nothing worse than having high energy noise machines awake from 6am until 10pm at night. Get them fed, showered, and in bedrooms and reading by 9pm at the latest. Give yourself a break in the evenings.

Put the tykes to work - vacuuming, loading/unloading the dishwasher, washing the bath. Give them an outlet for that energy that reduces your load.

And buy some nose cancelling headphones and soothe yourself. The constant noise pollution can be an unhelpful irritant throughout the day. Block that out to maintain sanity.

G'luck - two weeks to go!

I've been there, OP. In my case I put our baby in her pram and left our nine and ten year old DDs screaming at each other because I had just had enough. In this case I had spoken to DH, and knew that he was just around the corner on his way back from the station, so I knew he'd be walking through the door himself in less than five minutes. I walked down the road to our local and ordered a coffee and biscuits which I sat and ate in blissful peace.

FWIW our three are now 27, 26 and almost 17, and now all get on great - they're spending this weekend together, and regularly visit and stop over at one another's places. But it was bloody tough at times when they were younger. I hope you're okay now, OP. Go easy on yourself. 💐

No, it was my friend and her brother who did this to their mum 🤣 but yes, I can totally imagine them doing this!

This proving your friends kids were little shits!!

Funny though!

My friend told me that her mum did this when her and her brother were arguing, about the same ages as the OPs kids. She told them she had had enough and wasn’t coming back.

when her mum came back, about 20 minutes later, she found the two of them dividing up her jewellery 🤣🤣🤣

Meanwhile in Africa, children of primary school age are walking miles to get a bucket of water and working in the fields🙄

LOL I didn’t do anything other than suffer years of physical and psychological abuse from her (as did my sisters). We prayed she would leave, but she only ever abandoned us for a few days at a time, or a few weeks as we got older. She always came back eventually. My comment was really a flippant response the original pp who has never forgiven her mother for doing what the OP did when she was 8, given the real trauma I [and many other children] experienced.

What OP did was in no way abuse - she drove around the corner, sat and caught her breath. Responsibly let her DH know. And when she was calm, she returned.

I was about to say something similar. Dumped us by the village green and drove away. We'd have been 10 and 7 or thereabouts. Mum was only away five minutes, out of sight, but it never happened again.

At home we'd be turfed out into the garden where Mum couldn’t hear us squabbling.

Like Prince Philip telling the late Queen that if she didn't pipe down he'd do the same!

Yes, I think the walking away can be a much-needed reprieve. It's the leaving the house - with the undercurrent/implication of leaving for good - that I think goes a bit far, quite apart from the risk of no-one in the house.

But anyway OP, you are home, they are fine and I hope you get a quiet few hours.

If read OP's posts, the children were more than fine when they went home and they had a talk. No lasting damage and not like your friends experience.

100%.

But all children are different.
Her 11 year old could actually be really sensible (bickering aside), whereas another kid who's 13 could be completely untrustworthy.

I would expect the OP knows her children.

To be fair, this is just normal sibling behaviour. Me and my sibling (2 years apart) would have full on fist fights on the daily, I think our parents just learnt to block it out. And one of us went crying we were told “it’s your own fault for fighting”.

Ah let me guess. Absolutely nothing like OP’s situation and a massive back story/drip feed about all the ways you were wronged as a kid.

I appreciate it’s all relative, but there are adults who remember the pure terror of their parent kicking the living daylights out of them and their other parent.

Or actually not coming back, not just threatening it and going out for half an hour.

In the grand scheme of things, driving round the corner for half an hour isn’t anywhere near that scale.

I completely accept that when you haven’t experienced that, you may well be traumatised by your mother walking out for a bit, but I think it’s important we don’t group the two together and even imply that there’s similarity.

Hug to you op.
i agree that 9 and 12 are old enough to be alone for 30mins.

dont beat yourself up. They need to start listening… Xxxxx

Op I have done the same, my kids are close to the same age as yours just slightly older. I reached my limit and wasn’t doing great mentally anyway, I returned home after 20/30 minutes, feeling incredibly guilty at what I’d done, dc were fine. I just needed to have a big cry and to decompress. No I’m not proud of it and I don’t get the impression others who have done it are either but it happens, sharing experiences and relating to you is not the same as patting you on the back saying job well done.

Sure there’s an ideal way to deal with dc pushing you to your limit and i’m sure we all strive for that ideal, but we are human and make mistakes. Parenting is a long slog at times, it’s hard to do everything right and react in the perfect way all the time. No harm came to your dc and they weren’t so young that leaving them alone for a short time would have put them at significant risk. The eldest I presume would have a phone so if something did happen he could have called you. They are also old enough for you to explain why you did it and to understand how their actions contributed to the situation.

I see you have now returned home, I hope the rest of the day goes a bit more smoothly for you.

Better than beating the snot out of them! Know your limits and do what it takes to be a loving mother—even if it means stepping away. I celebrate you for not turning to physical and hopefully not verbal abuse. As for the unintended emotional impact, let’s put your mask on first so you can be that loving, patient mum. Stepping away helps you do that. All the best mum! 🤗

i think you need to start implementing quiet time. Hopefully they both have separate rooms. Set a timer for an hour tell them it doesn’t matter what they are doing but they have to stay in their rooms and stay fairly quiet. That way they are separate and you get a bit of a break daily

There's a world of difference between "I need a break!" and leaving for a bit, and saying "I'm not having this be my life" as OP did.

Depending on the background context, dynamics, history etc. the dc might've taken it seriously that she was fully leaving them.

Probably not, in this case, but I and several people I know remember the pure terror of their mothers leaving and saying they're not coming back. People who talk about this remember it in vivid detail as if it was yesterday.