To feel like I’ve lost my freedom and spontaneity for the next decade minimum

[overandoveragain26]

I’ve already posted in lone parents but no replies and I’ll be honest - I really need a whinge tonight, nothing else needed [ smile]

I love my children so much but … I want some time away, some proper time away, not a few snatched hours, a full day, preferably a weekend, where I don’t need to worry about dashing back, can explore somewhere new, can wander and be me and soak it all in.

And it isn’t realistic for it to happen. No family to help, it’s a huge massive ask for friends, and I just need to wait until they are old enough to be self sufficient but realistically that’s going to be a decade or more!

But your age is valid.

Could you afford to pay a babysitter once a week to pick both kids up and stay with them until 6pm?

Do you work OP? I was a lone parent for many years and my advice is you need to treasure the snatched time. Then they start doing cub camps, holiday tennis day camp, stagecoach at the weekends. If you can afford it of course you can also get a respite nanny in. There were a couple of teachers at my DD school that did that in the holidays for extra money. It definitely does get easier

I'm also a solo parent due to bereavement. I'm 44 with a 4yo and 10yo. I'm going to have one day a week all to myself from September and it feels like it's been a very long time coming.

I am so sorry for your loss and totally get it. You are also grieving what your parenting journey now looks like vs what you thought. Big hug.

have you come across widowed and young? (Anyone under 50 iirc). One of my besties found it kept her sane finding people who really really understand where she was and she made friends through them who really made her feel less alone.

And as everyone says: it does get better. My kids have SEN so my parenting journey is not what I expected either with many of the challenges you describe but for different reasons.

And if you can afford it, get help; and if you can’t, accept any help you are offered. You won’t get that sense of properly clocking off, but those small pockets do help.

Take it day by day (or hour by hour). X

It might feel like a big ask to ask a friend to have the kids for a night or 2 but think of it from your friends point of view. They would probably be gutted to know that you were in need of the break but didn’t feel you could ask. I would help out my friend in this situation in a heartbeat. It doesn’t have to be transactional.

Can you afford things like a 1 hr deep tissue marriage or a facial/pedicure? I used to book a 30 mins back massage plus half hr pedicure at a really classy beauty salon on a monthly basis. I stopped after the COL though but ds was 18 by then and started a fulltime job. I have had no family support either and the ex only helped intermittently due to his shifts.
I think the Way Foundation will really help though. You can make new friends both women and men who are in the same boat. You take your sprigs along too.
Good luck.

Apologies for the typos.

Gently, I think you're letting "perfect" get in the way of "good enough".

I was in a similar situation. Family helped out with childcare while I was at work which was great, but then they didn't want the kids any time I wasn't working as they had done their bit.

You just have to work with what you've got.

Take a day off work mid-week when the kids are in school/nursery and do whatever. I used to do this once a month when my kids were little. It got me a few hours of wondering around the shops or sitting drinking a coffee whilst reading a book and people watching.

Get a childminder or babysitter who will do the odd Saturday or pick them up from school and nursery if you want a full day. Start asking your friends kids round for play dates and see if they would mind having your kids over sometime.

A weekend is maybe less realistic at this age, but mine all went to various youth camps that had weeks/weekends away from about aged 9 up.

Do you work, OP ? If so, could you take a day off every so often and have the eight hours to yourself ? Obviously, you’ll still be clock watching to be back in time for pick-up but you’d have several hours to yourself.

Or if you don’t work, can you find a good, reliable babysitter who you could book maybe once a month on a weekend or week-day and have the day to yourself ? And maybe even build to them doing an over-night.

@needadvice2026 thank you so much for understanding. I tried to explain badly in my OP but it isn’t cocktails and shopping, it’s just that spontaneity - fancy some chocolate, none in the house, no problem with a husband, no husband, no chocolate. And of course it is no big deal and you can wait until tomorrow but your life ends up filled with no big deals and wait until tomorrow, wait until they are both at school, wait until they are old enough to be left, I get it - but it does grind you down.

@OtterlyAstounding I really wish I hadn’t mentioned my age and I’m sorry - I’m finding the fixation on it grossly insensitive and upsetting in the extreme. Losing a husband or partner with little children is shit whether you’re 45 or 25. Does that really need explaining? Apparently yes, it does.

@Imightbeinthewronghere oh silly me, yes my age is very valid, i now don’t mind in the slightest that I’ve lost DH because hey, had all those wonderful years of freedom. Marvellous.

Has it occurred to anybody that I’ve lost years, of retirement and enjoying a different phase of life? Again, apparently not, it doesn’t matter because I had the temerity to have children aged 39 and 42 and then to lose a partner. Apparently I am only allowed to grieve what could have been if I was < 35.

@Leggsses i can see you’re trying to help but I am a bit confused. I haven’t mentioned ‘perfect’ at all, more that as much as I love my children I do feel a bit trapped and confined by the fact I’m their sole carer and since they naturally are far too young to be left, if I do want to do something for me it has to be done either with great expense and prior arrangements and / or within time when they are at school and preschool. (I do work but have two days off in the week: at present I have my youngest but can always put her in preschool for an extra day) but it’s still a very rushed day and while it’s a nice ‘wander round the shops’ day it’s not ‘go to a museum in another city’ day.

I am genuinely not sure what this has to do with perfection?

Childminders don’t tend to do ad hoc days; they are thin on the ground anyway. And with two children in different places it’s still difficult. Now that problem will partly be alleviated when they are both at school and after school club is available but it still only goes on until 430 so as much as it’s helpful it’s also a) costly and b) still only really an extra hour!

Feel free to have a bit of a whine, line parenting is hard, especially in the circumstances you describe.

I'm not going to offer solutions, that's not really what you were looking for and sometimes it's ok to just listen and agree that yes the situation sucks.

For what it's worth, I am coming out of he other side, my children are now adults and I have that freedom back, it feels like only yesterday they were small. Hang on in there, it feels like forever but it will come round for you.

@TheJoyousHiker i can do that but it is six hours (9-3) not eight.

And really it is the spontaneous element of it all that’s gone. It isn’t ’I can’t do this’ it’s more ‘I can only do this with so much planning and so much expense and is it worth it.’

Now that goes with very little children but with a partner it does usually start to ease a bit at 3/4. Mine won’t for some time yet. That’s OK - I can come to terms with that, but I can (surely) explain this on a parenting board.

Mine are scouts/GG.
Scouts/GG do weekends away and camps in summer. Dd2 13 yo went to a jamboree this summer abroad for 8 nights.

Of course they started with a few nights away. Signed them up at 5 yo.

I am not single but we didn't had family around to help as we came to UK to work frim an EU country and really scouts/GG trips were amazing for a few days of for us parent in a busy life.

We did sleepovers too with good friends taking turns.

Thanks @BasketCaseBug . It will come back I know … am sure the parents of the y6 leavers a few weeks ago were thinking it only felt like yesterday theirs were in reception.

I hear you @overandoveragain26 mine are the same age as yours (and I'm slightly older) and I dream of even just a mini adventure occasionally! I don't know what the solution is right now so I don't have any answers for you but I do know how you feel! 💐

It’s not really solely a lone parent problem - most parents lose that spontaneity and freedom when they have kids. Even with a partner, you still don’t really have that unless you have a very nice and willing family and a lot don’t have that! I also crave some time to myself after working all week long but DH has work and coaching commitments that make it impossible.

I just suck it up, it won’t be forever. Or take them on my adventures.

Are you sure friends wouldn't enjoy a reciprocal arrangement? I have a DH and family locally, but I'd still kill for a weekend off and would happily trade weekends with a friend.

@Tiptopflipflop I don’t think my children are in any way ready for leaving me for a night. I wouldn’t feel comfortable for anybody in that scenario, and even so, it honestly isn’t that exactly. It isn’t a simple sort of equation - I want this, this is how to make it happen.

While you do lose freedom with very little children it generally is easier to get at least some of it back the older they get. That is years away for me now.

@Alltheusefulitems thank you … I genuinely don’t even mind all that much, I’d far rather have them than not but just the same I am aware my life is very restricted and will stay that way for the foreseeable. And it really isn’t the same at all as a husband working away or long hours, it really, really is nothing like that.

I absolutely sympathise, and didn’t mean to be upsetting in regards to your age. I just thought it was a different perspective. Of course losing your husband and having to parent alone is devastating whether you’re in your twenties or forties, but having your twenties and thirties to look back on is something. I suppose looking on the bright side isn’t what you’re wanting right now, though.

Becoming a parent really does absolutely eat up your life, even if you have a partner (to a lesser degree, of course!) if you don’t have wider family support – we took a toddler on our honeymoon, and didn’t get a night to ourselves for eight years – but that’s parenthood. Relentless, never-ending parenting and no time to yourself often come with the territory. It has to be so much harder alone, though.

I do think that it’ll be a lot better in another three years, when your youngest is six – you’ll probably start getting your freedom back then, if you want to.

Try not to over analyse OP, you will only feel overwhelmed. You'll have snatched moments along the way and the pressure eases as they get older but I honestly think true freedom is something you leave behind at parenthood and it's ok to grieve for that too. For now try to organise a half day somewhere while they are at school to switch off. The routine will change, right now it's probably unrelentless by day but you have night time to yourself for a few hours. In a few years they will be up til bedtime and you'll lose that night time solitude but you will be able to pop out and leave them for a while. There will be times when they have play dates and sleepovers and long activities and you'll have those random times for exercise or grocery shopping or going for a coffee. You are at an incredibly demanding and tiring stage now and it definitely gets easier.

Mine are 13, 11 and 7 but my youngest is severely disabled. I work when he’s at school but outside of those times I am his full time carer (and he only sleeps 5-6 hours a night) so I completely understand the lack of spontaneity. I’m not sure when I’ll ever get mine back as he will never live an independent life. I do get 3 hours a month respite care, so that’s my ‘wander round the shops’ time! Sadly no one else is able to have him overnight.
Sometimes the hand we’ve been dealt is pretty shit, and it’s ok to have a moan.

You maybe need to either save up and invest in a very reliable, kindly babysitter to help you enjoy some proper breaks if you don't feel your friends will help.

I think most parents feel like this, I remember it well, I just acclimatised. I don't think you can be fully carefree as a parent tbh. I never mastered it anyway!

Children grow up quickly op, you will soon be whinging that they are now all grown up and you never see them!

You do leave true freedom behind of course but there is a difference between that and what I am facing. Sorry but there is.

I posted hoping to feel better but now I feel worse! You’re making a silly fuss about nothing, you had your twenties and thirties and everyone loses freedom. That’s how I feel, now.

You will have options sooner than a decade...... Cup camps start at 8ish i think so maybe 5 yrs til your youngest could go... Or there are holiday 'camps' like pgl that many kids go on in school holidays..that are residential.... Although even the non residential are often full days and they usually start at about age 5 here as that's what parents need in the summer..

So that would give you whole days once your youngest is old enough

Yes in the main adult spontaneity does go but you're heading for options at least...

Totally get it. The little things grind you down bit by bit of the situation, that it’s not even the big things.

But dreaming of the day to be able to do the simplest of things when your stuck in this situation, to just a whole day off or 24hrs off in ten or so yrs is sometimes hard on the mind. Sundays hit me hard when I ruminate on it all. being on call and these little peoples only person and no one else to fall back on, can feel so far off.

Also early 40’s. Like you said it’s not wanting a night out on the town, it’s the simple ‘don’t worry darling I’ll do the bath and bed routine, or you have an hour lie in or two to go do something for yourself. Nip out to the shop when you need something urgently for said child. But it’s 9pm. It is a very limiting existence tbh.

Age is irrelevant. feeling stuck in a situation and just hearing others say I get it. Sometimes we don’t even need someone giving solutions we’ve gone through in our heads over and over to try be the solution. The reality is the reality.

anyway I won’t add any more to this post as going through not my most positive motherhood experience and don’t want to be Debbie downer. It’s sad I wish the yrs away for my little one to be more independent.

I hope somehow you get some relief sometime soon. You deserve it after what it sounds like you’ve been through