To think it’s bad to just live your life through your children?

[Neversayever]

To the point that when they leave home you’re not left with not much of your own life?

I'm a bit like this i suppose, but my kids are very young. I don't make time to see friends etc because i don't have any. I don't have any hobbies atm but am looking forward to going back to some things i used to do when i have more time. I don't really have much to talk about other than politics (because i read the news) and my kids. I can't think what DH and I will talk about when our kids have gone.

OP I met a lady who told me she didn't like to go out on evenings and weekends because of the kids
She was a SAHM and I was working in the day

She really tried to make an effort so wanted to come to my work at lunchtime but that only worked a couple of times as generally I don't take lunch, then leave early

I later found out her children were 19 and 17. And very busy themselves on evenings and weekends.

Each to their own but I found it odd. I wondered if she just didn't want to go out on evenings and weekends without her husband or something.

No of course it's not full on for 18 years, 18 yr old don't want to be fussed over by parents, they enjoy being independent, or at least mine did.

We have a 14 yr old son, I cook him some of his meals, wash his clothes, treat him to a holiday every year and days out and talk to him a lot. I have nothing to do with his social life and not much to do with his school life, because he is slowly becoming independent of us. We help and advise him when he needs us.

DH and I go out in the evening whenever we fancy it, which isn't very often these days. I do lots of other things. I certainly am not devoting my live to DS, he would laugh at the thought.

Yanbu. My children are the most important thing in my life, but I’ve always had my own friendships, my work, hobbies etc. It wouldn’t feel fair or right to centre my whole life around my children to the exclusion of those things. Not only would I be failing to live my life fully, but it would also put a huge pressure on my children.

'Bad' isn't the word I would use, but instead perhaps 'ill-advised' or 'not the best approach for a fulfilling life' or 'unhealthy.

Becoming overly obsessed by one's children, to the point where you can't think about anything else or do anything else or commit to anything else, is a lack of balance. It is going beyond making children a priority and wanting to parent well, to a level of obsessions and imbalance which is unhealthy. I would say the same about people who are obsessed with t heir partner tot he point they can't spend time with anyone else.

Life comes in phases and at certain times children need more input - think newborn phase with their continual feeding needs 24/7. However, I think children and relationships benefit from adults having relationships and interests outside the home and beyond the family. It is good for children to see their parents have hobbies and interests and to spend time with friends and to meet commitments, such as work commitments which show self discipline. it is also good for children to realise that their needs are not the only ones and that sometimes a parent will say 'no' to them because of something they themselves are doing, and that parents aren't just there to jump whenever requested at the drop of a hat.

Clearly there is balance. We want to be a good parents and to be there for our children and available for them - that doesn't mean sitting at home thinking about them 24/7 and not allowing ourselves to focus on anything else - sounds very unhealthy to do so, and likely to lead to less good, rather than better parenting.

I spend a lot of time with my girls. They are early teens. I can't bear the thought of them leaving me but I have a full time teaching job which I also love so definitely have another life.

Very odd post! If course the kids should be the most important while they are little but when they're older why can't you do your own thing ? Why do they have to stop you?
Both me and dh have already said we would not mind if the kids want to stay living with us when they grow up, if they don't meet people they want to settle down with. Life is about family, I don't begrudge family life!

I know of families where children have felt they couldn't move away or even go to university because they couldn't live their parent alone. That's really not healthy.

They don’t suddenly stop being your children at 18. DD has her own home and DP now she is 25 but is home with us for the weekend. We message most days even if it is just silly pictures.
DS is at uni but still comes home for odd weekend and holidays and phones often.

Both are coming on a family holiday next month.

It’s not a switch off, more a wind down. I lived my life WITH my children not through them.

Well it depends on the person concerned.

Between work and family my parents didn’t have much time for hobbies or seeing friends much.

However since they retired they have built themselves an awesome life. They volunteer, have a wide social circle, take classes, go for days out and travel.

By contrast my PILs seem to be finding retirement much harder. They haven’t made an active effort to build a new kind of life and often expect us to fill the gap.

I don’t think it’s necessarily what you do now that matters, it’s how proactive you are at filling the gap when you identify it.

I think it is best for children to have the example of parents who are happy in their skin - whether that means by a sahp who home educates, or a parent who works full time outside of home.

There is no parent there, truly present if we get lost, and having small children can feel like this. Taking time and space for yourself is important whatever age your children are😊

Some would probably say dh and i are living our lives through our kids :)

We were both very good athletes who didn’t reach our goals for whatever reason.

However we both loved absolutely every minute of it. So when the kids came along they were signed up for classes. We never really cared what level they got to, just that they had fun, made lifelong friends and kept fit, like we did.

As it turned out one of our kids is fucking talented. The other not so much, but loves it anyway. So our lives- money, time, and a lot of stress and emotion, is taken up with tournaments, training, squads. Stepped back a little in careers so we can take time off for ferrying and support.

For me, living life through your kids is expecting or forcing them to follow a path you wanted- to be an athlete when they want to be an artist, to be a dr when they want to be a writer. To go to university when they want to be a plumber.

Yes dh and i would have loved to have reached the standard dc has, but they do it because it’s their choice.

YANBU. Completely agree.

I'm a single parent. I've always been very clear that my children's needs are absolutely more important than mine. They come first in that area. But their wants? No. Mine are just as important (not more important, just equal). So, sometimes we do what they want and sometimes we do what I want (activities, holidays, films, meals, whose social engagement takes priority, work/play etc)

I’m not talking about pushing a child to do something you wanted to do. My fault for maybe not phrasing it correctly.

I’m talking about giving up your identity and having nothing in your life but your children.

My identity pre-children was working and sitting on the sofa reading/watching a film/eating pizza. As a mum I still do that. I will continue to do that once she's left home. Why the assumption that if you don't have an interesting life you are sad and unhappy.

I’m still a little confused OP as to what it is your asking. Do you live your life through your children and they have now grown up and your worried? Life can start at anytime.

Or is it that you constantly go out and leave them, someone has commented on that to you and you feel like you shouldn’t have to lead your life through your children and trying to get justification? You don’t need it.

I don’t like going out, so I don’t. I don’t like meeting people either and have very very few friends. But I like it this way. My sister would perhaps look at me and think I’m unhappy and live through my kids because I don’t have many friends, but I choose not to have those friends. Everyone thinks your unhappy without friends...although I don’t know why. I would find it stressful and depressing keeping up relationships with many others who are friends...I prefer to not have that stress and lead a calm life that I enjoy.

I have lots of interests and hobbies, but anyone can get those, even if you have kids under 18

What is an identity though? For some people being identified as a parent is one of the most successful things they've done. I have a friend who gave up her own life when her 17 year old was born. She hasn't worked since, her children are now 17 and 12 and her life is their lives. But she's happy. She is a mother before everything else. She can still make friends and enjoy herself. She's starting to branch out and look at doing things for herself in the last few months as her son is most likely going off to university next year. I don't see her as a lost cause. She's living the life she wants, not one someone else thinks would be better for her.

Its a dyad
And that is whether it is a baby/mother or a toddler or a mother and a teen.

What is an identity though?

I don't understand why it's important to label yourself as something.
I can't think I've ever considered identity.
It's not like people ask how you identify yourself, I'd be well stuck if someone asked me.
I don't think I ever had an identity to give up for children, I had a career but that didn't identify me as a person, I've had 3 dc and neither has that.
I've helped support my dh in his business, that's not it either.
I have hobbies and interests, perhaps they identify what type of person I am, but I don't identify myself through these either.

gillybeanz exactly, there's too much emphasis on parents of young children needing to have an "identity". But the only identity labels people really use are related to jobs/ careers or family roles, doctor, teacher, banker,
mum, dad etc . Labels don't define you as a person, they just define certain aspects of your life.
People that give up work to have children don't lose their identity, they just lose a label.

I think thr op has been very clear and some folks are deliberately misunderstanding her.

It's not about labels. It's not about pushing your kids to live the life you wanted.

It's about having nothing else going on in your life other than your kids. Being so heavily focused on their every single need and want and every single element and facet of their lives and having nothing else going on in yours.

It's also not about not prioritising them or putting them first, but just to be so heavily focused on every single facet of their lives to the exclusion of everything else and you youtself have no life other than focusing on theirs.

That's what is not healthy for the kid or the parent.

I agree OP. I.know a lot of women doing it and i do wonder what they will do when the last children have left. Strangely, the men all seem to have careers, hobbies, mistresses etc to keep them busy ....

I'm a SAHM so my life revolves around my family (DH, DS & pets). Right now I am happy with this set up but I am concerned about losing my own identity as DCs grow up. Once we are done having DCs & they are in school I am planning on studying. Not sure what, but I'm hoping it'll be something to do with one of my hobbies rather than my previous career

I get what you mean OP and I know someone like this - she is in her 50's now in a very low paid casual job with no career prospects. Her life IS her kids - her now adult kids still live at home and I can see from things like her (daily) facebook updates that she leans VERY heavily on her kids for all sorts - social life, buying her luxuries (she hints very heavily by tagging them by name with a pic of something expensive - perfume, homeware, holidays etc. She is very involved in their social lives etc.

Don't look at it and think aww how sweet that they are close, I think those poor kids!

It's stifling. I'm an only child (adopted as a baby). My mother had no friends, no interests and no job. She never received a phone call or a letter from a friend when I was a kid in the 1970s/1980s afaik. Now, aged 80+, she just waits for my children and me to visit, there's nothing else in her life other than my dad (he had several friends but they all predeceased him, he also had an interesting job and was sporty). I resent my mother for her behaviour and my father for allowing it. I distinctly remember one Saturday night when I was in sixth form - dad had gone out and I was getting ready to go to the pub with friends, and my mother asked if she could come with me - to a sixth form hangout where everyone was underage! She was about 56 at the time. Pathetic.