To not enjoy my children's childhoods?

[Maisieknew]

It's the back to school inevitability that's prompted this.

My feelings here are really conflicted as I think if I could have my time over I'd still have children. But I don't enjoy them as children. I find the sort of family based activities for young (primary school aged and under) so tedious and largely pointless and I don't enjoy a lot of the things you're supposed to enjoy and take pride in (I hate school plays, parents evening bored me to tears, I just can't get excited about sports day.)

I don't know if I am alone and I do love them - I just don't find under 12s interest me much.

But Beaufort, you can surely see there that the problem is that your mother explicitly shared her feelings with you.

As you yourself have said, you find the teenage years harder, which is where I suspect I'll come into my own. I've personally never once experienced parents attending secondary sports days (I am a secondary school teacher) but it's entirely possible that's just the schools I've taught at!

Of course I want them for who they are :) but they are kids and can't help being bloody irritating! They find it funny. There's a sign near us with STOP! BEWARE! CHILDREN! warning of a sharp bend in the road and whenever we walk past it I always pretend to be horrified and screech, 'ugh, save me, there are CHILDREN over there!' My eldest then says 'but WE are children!' and I pretend to scream and say 'oh no, help, how AWFUL!'

It has never failed to elicit giggles including from school friends who think 'the lady who doesn't like children' is very funny! (I also tell children Miss Trunchbull is my hero and I do hope somebody got locked in the Chokey today.)

It might not be going to sea on an upturned table but it's affectionate and it's real and there's a lot of love for my children. As I say, I would have had them again a thousand times over, but I don't cling onto their childhoods - I just love them more and more the older they get and find them more fun and amusing.

Teenagers are great :)

I loved the early years, taking them out for the day, museums, shows, farms, even play areas. Now my children are tweens, they don't want to do anything or go anywhere. I have stopped dragging them places as it wasn't fun for anyone.

My mum told me (when I was older) she didn't like babies or young children and much preferred it when we were older and could have interesting conversations. I think the fact that she sacrificed her career to be a SAHM played a big part in this, she said she was just desperate for intellectual conversation and was stuck at home with baby talk. Try not to worry about it too much, just do your best to make an effort, I had a secure happy childhood and turned out just fine. She has since gone properly soppy over every single grandchild as they've arrived so I think it's a very different matter when they're not your responsibility and you can just enjoy the fun bits.

I do get you OP.... I enjoy school parent evenings but sports day was grim. I did look on it as an opportunity to get together with friends rather than watch dd come last in the egg and spoon.

I never took mine to museums ...too full of other people's children!!
And have never done that MN staple...hot chocolate and marshmallows under a duvet, watching a film

I absolutely love them as teenagers....their independence and getting ready to move away from home.
And then like mrsjay I will be smiling

I don't worry about it, rightly or wrongly, as I know I love them. I just don't understand or empathise with tearful 'where has my baby gone' type posts as the older they are, the better they get for me! :)

too full of other people's children

YES!

I think we are too much of fidgety arses to enjoy the duvet and film and hot chocolate thing. It sounds lovely but I know the toddler would take off, someone probably me would need a wee, and then a silent 'thank Christ for that' would descend when the film finished

Wittering banal stuff... just wait until your preteen & teenage DC discover Clash of Clans, Pottermania, You-tube stars, Sherlock-BBT-Miranda-DrWho, Airsoft, Football...

Since DD started high school she does about 10 sports events a yr (a few of which we can go along & watch), plus she is in the school musical so pretty obligatory to go to at least one of the (3+ hr with interval) performances and of course all the support in getting costumes, drop offs & pick ups for rehearsals (very late pickups after performances). Non-stop talk about the rehearsals. That's if you have a joiner like DD, as opposed to a would-be dropout like my DS who hides away & does almost nothing outside his room.

Parents evenings:, on top of induction, there's settling in meeting with form tutor, one parents eve/yr and GCSE options evenings.

I enjoy dd more now she's older.she is ace.

I'm introverted so I always find plays, sports days etc an ordeal to get through. It's okay to say you don't enjoy everything, I'm sure their dad doesn't either. I think society has impossibly high standards for motherhood that none of us will ever meet.

Yes, but they can be subtly directed to ones own friends then, can't they? :) Remember, I am including all under-12s in this, in other words primary aged down!

The thing with secondary is there isn't that expectation for involvement from parents which is particularly true at KS1. No Mother's Day lunches, or assemblies, or 'come and look at this piece of paper your child screwed up and poured glue on' mornings! Bliss!

I don't think secondary school
Is more detached. More whinging and target setting days twice a year where they get the full day off school but you have to take them in in full school uniform to get talked at for an hour

That's not true of every secondary though, is it? :) I've only experienced that in one secondary school and I agree it's stupid and pointless though.

The day I stopped feeling so guilty about hardly taking my kids to soft play centres and playgrounds (once in a blue moon yes, but infrequently) is the day I began to really enjoy my kids more. I love my kids BUT I have always found motherhood draining because IT IS and anyone who pretends it's Pinterest Perfection is delusional.

Maybe you would enjoy your DC more if you would remove the expectations that Pinterest, errr I mean society, puts on us. I watch Mr. Maker there on the telly and I think, "You're having a laugh if you think I'm going to take egg boxes, google eyes, glue and infuse it all with mock enthusiasm to do 'crafts' with my kids. I'm not a crafter. This does not make me an inferior parent. Do you know, I had to get to that place in my mind? It's incredible the amount of guilt and sense of imperfection that is heaped on us as parents.

I have a one year old. I high five myself every night because I've managed to get through another day- or more to the point, HE Has managed to get through the day without killing himself on the Little Tykes slide... again, or accidentally put himself on a hot wash cycle (he discovered that he can actually BE the towels inside the machine. This is not a good discovery. Certainly not ground-breaking either).

I have a 5 year old who hasn't seen an episode of Downton Abbey, nor does she even know what this tripe is, but she seems to be living out the script. It's all polyester flammable frocks and drama... I love her, but it's draining.

And then I have a 'teen'. We don't talk about him much or TO him. What I can say is that there is a Lord of the Flies smell that comes from his room when he opens the door. It sort of wafts through the house- chunders more like. Can a smell chunder? This one can. It's like a hail storm of stink. That's when I know It is alive- my creation and first-born emerges from its Dracula coffin bed.

IT IS OK TO NOT ENJOY EVERY WAKING MOMENT OR PHASE WITH YOUR KIDS. Just remember that and you'll be fine. Your love for your kids is not at risk if you think it is utterly silly and a waste of time to look like a tit at the school disco, where other tipsy drunk mums in their 40s think they're looking kinda cool, sexy even, in front of the hot dad of that weird kid in year 1....the one with the upside down face. If you don't want to wear glo-stick mouse ears with the head teacher while your cheap table red sloshes all over the floor of the school hall to the strains of another manufactured Pharrell theme park tune, then let me just say, you are not only within your rights to be that parent who takes a step back, you are an admirable parent! You are Da Bomb. And Sports Day? Please. The parents' race only serves as a grim reminder of my urinary incontinence that has never gone away since DC3. Over to you, Lycra mum, with muscles on your muscles. The torch is all yours.

I am dreading the school gates next week and I don't do soft play centres! I don't 'do' coffee and plastic balls and screaming kids. No thanks. Do I think my children are suffering because I don't spend all day singing Bingo Was His Name-O with gushing enthusiasm? Not for a moment. CBeebies does that for me. Thanks Justin! You've been there throughout all of my kids' childhoods. Much obliged.

We're all winging it. And every day I think of that brilliant Pulitzer Prize winning novel I'm meant to write... the one that will make all the best seller lists. The one that will NEVER get written because I am an over-stretched mother who can barely speak most mornings.

But the kids feel totally loved, totally safe, and happy... yes, I can honestly say I've got happy kids- stroppy, kinda weird a times. I mean, don't you ever have those moments where you're looking at your kids thinking, "That's a loopy bit of DNA that slipped in there. We'll have to 'nurture' that bit of nature out of you."

Don't mind soft play as they can play independently while I mumsnet read my book!

YANBU. My favourite bit is to watch them out of the window playing happily, supervised by someone else, then go back to my work. I feel like I'm missing out, but then I go down and within minutes they do my head in. Don't they realise I just want cuddles?!! Often I end up being snappy with them. But that's okay. We're all individuals. I'm their mum and they accept me this way, like I accept them with their banal wittering etc. It's getting much better as they get older and really there aren't many sports days, parents evenings etc.

Horsewalks, admirable post. Even though I understood about one word in three because I only have one three year old. (Do write the novel, though. I let Justin babysit and write mine...)

I don't think born in to a particular set of circumstances guarantees your child's happiness. Surely, you have to engage with them with some sincerity to achieve that- as children get older they definitely recognise when you're not doing that IMO.

While I admire the honesty of some of the posts but they make me sad, too. Imagine what it would feel like to know your mum or dad didn't "enjoy" you or your company.

It seems to lump in the entire childhood, as if its one big amorphous mass of dullness?

A lot of it is bloody dull and boring...school plays, football matches, homework, bedtimes blah blah blah. But you talk as if the whole thing is something that has nothing to do with you, as they just come as they are with a lifestyle you can't control. If you aren't actually creating things you enjoy as much as they do, why the hell not? It's like anything in life, you have to put up with a ll the bits that don't appeal, but if you're not trying to make other bits of it fit who you are, then its your own fault you don't enjoy ANY of it.

I can kind of see where you're coming from. I have two older DSs aged nearly 12 and nearly 14, I also have a 4yo DD. I think I enjoyed the boys being little but by the time no3 came along I felt like I'd been there and done that so to speak. I love her, she's wonderful but I'm so so done with small kid stuff.

My 13 yo had me crying with laughter in the car this morning singing Spinal Tap songs, it's so much fun when you don't have to wipe their arses

Op you sounds funny and have fun with your children really it all sounds fine . I was never an enthusiastic mumsy type i would get but Emmas mummy made 100 cupcakes for brownie/school thing I always said did she thats nice heres a quid to buy 1

you might as well start trying to find the fun in it, otherwise youre looking at years of shit.
Wishing you were doing everything with another adult instead of your children, might signify you are lonely in general. Do you get adult company?

When im going through a depression, I often think about a no-child life, but i think its being overwhelmed with responsibility, and that gets easier as the children get older, but when things are going well, I really enjoy experiences with them (not sports day though, that can fuck off)

You are the only one that can change your attitude though. It isnt set in stone, and if youre not careful, the cats in the cradle thing will come and bite your arse later down the line

It's not years of shit :) I don't sit around thinking 'I am bored, this is boring'

But when people the the baby/toddler/primary school days I can't empathise. John - my own mum was much the same. Would she have walked through hot coals to make sure I got to a brownie party on time - yep. But HER happiness didn't stem from it. If I did well in a school play she was happy I was happy but she didn't need to see it herself if you follow me.

It's quite hard to explain.

Can't you just do stuff with your kids that you enjoy?

If I did well in a school play she was happy I was happy but she didn't need to see it herself if you follow me

That's the bit I don't get. You really wouldn't enjoy seeing your child do well in something that they were presumably proud of? That would give you no pleasure? I just don't get that. I'm not judging or anything, I just genuinely don't understand.

I do, but it's still kids doing it isn't it? :)

I wouldn't, no John. A typical school play is about an hour, filled with people coughing and discreetly checking social media as children robotically bellow stuff about there being no room at the inn. Obviously, I'm pleased if they are happy doing that but here, under the cloak of anonymity, I will admit it is boring :)