My At Home Dad experience started at the beginning of 2019, and it was… interesting. Since then, things have become… interestinger.
As part of the communal look back on 2019, I wanted to work through my issues talk about how I have progressed through the year. My hope is that some future at-home dad (or mom) can read from my experiences and realize that the first week is not a sign of the future. You can and will get better at it, but there will be many bumps along the way.
In the beginning
When this whole thing began, I had high hopes for my abilities; this was an incorrect assumption.
Spending weekends, or even two weeks, with your kids does not prepare you for the daily experience that is stay-at-home life. No longer does the novelty of being home with parents represent a break in routine; you are their routine. At first, they won’t recognize it as such. You might get a few days of accidental compliance, or tantrums that they aren’t doing what they used to do. Kids are creatures of habit, and you are upsetting their internal clock.
Once they get used to the idea you are no longer sending them to daycare, the new routines set in. And let me tell you, those routines are quick to set and painful to break. With the turmoil, anything that is enjoyable becomes “routine,” even if it was only one time. During the first week I added TV at lunch one time, and it became a daily request to the point that refusal (for any reason) was met with tantrums.
Starting off right
As you establish these new routines, it pays to be mindful of how some things are framed.
Because of my cystic fibrosis, I need to spend an hour after I wake up doing treatments. The boys are ones who also wake up rather early, often while Jenny is getting ready for work. Almost without fail, I would not be done with my treatment. That meant transitioning them down to my office. In order to keep them occupied and in my office, I used the laptop to show an episode or two of a favorite show.
Realizing that this could become the routine, I made sure to connect it to doing my treatment. As soon as my treatment was done, whatever story they were watching could finish, then the laptop was turned off. By defining the conditions (Mama going to work, Papa doing his treatment), it was easier to point out that one or both conditions weren’t met, so there was no laptop.
Such narrow definitions can help reign in any tantrums that might happen. It won’t prevent them (trust me on this), but compared to other cherished routines, they’re fewer and less explosive.
Hitting stride… and then stumbling
As the winter turned to spring, things were going great. But other issues started to crop up, many of them personal in nature.
Being on point for the boys everyday started to wear on me. I found myself checking the calendar and noting how many more days until summer break started for Jenny. It wasn’t that I was feeling inadequate as a parent. It was isolation.
I didn’t really feel a need for adult contact or adult topics. I was feeling so wrapped up in the lives of my kids that I didn’t have time for my own pursuits or other relationships, including with Jenny. Part of it was I felt no one understood what was going on, couldn’t relate, or otherwise wasn’t able to connect with my struggles. Plus I was finding myself completely wiped out by 4 PM, almost numb. The last thing I wanted to do was face my own turmoil, so I would hide in my office or head out on shopping trips that ended at Buffalo Wild Wings for food and drink alone.
Then the summer disappeared
The summer, however, didn’t change this. As it was Jenny’s time to recharge as well, I tried to keep her at arm’s length when it came to the boys. Plus there was resistance to change from both the boys and me. We had established our routine, with occasional breaks for the weekend. But the weekend routine turned into our daily routine, which meant ceding control. It also meant that my usual task markers disappeared, and a lot of home care routines fell by the wayside.
The summer also has numerous other activities, so we never had a chance to establish anything. June quickly turned into July, which brought daily swim lessons for two weeks, followed by a few days at home packing for a long trip to the family cabin. Then we spent nearly three weeks at the cabin, with only a couple of weeks back home before the school year started.
All of these things were great on their own. The boys took to the water like fish; they spent hours in the lake or on nature walks at the cabin; and our eyes were opened to how capable our little 3 year olds were when it came to things like play and fishing. But in many ways the summer was a blur, with new routines coming and going every couple of weeks. By the time things settled down, the summer was done.
Yet a new routine
Once Labor Day passed, it was time for the school year to start. For the first three summers after the boys were born, this just meant they went back to daycare five days a week.
But now, school started for them. As kids who were three by the district cut off, they were eligible for two or three day a week preschool. We chose the two-day option back in March, when I still had nightmares about getting them ready each morning for daycare. This proved to be a good choice for my sanity.
We established that our routine is a lack of consistent routine, which is its own problem. Days of the week don’t mean much to the four year old crowd. But they can count, so we’ve helped them understand that “long sleeps” can be used as a measurement of time. If they ask when class is again, I can say, “Two long sleeps.” And they understand this to mean it’s not right away.
For me, it provides a chance to work on my own projects again, or start new ones that I’ve never done before. I haven’t been able to get back to writing as I would like, but that may come with time. As has been the theme today, routine is something that is valuable to establish, whether it’s with kids or for yourself.
Into the New Year
With 2020 around the corner, in many ways I feel better about where we are at, though there are still some messes that need to be cleaned up. I’m not one to make resolutions, as the arbitrary endpoints of the calendar year don’t mesh well with the life I live.
Instead, I’ll just share a New Year wish from Neil Gaiman in 2011, as I feel like it’s valuable for both parents and artists of any kind:
I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes.
Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re Doing Something.
So that’s my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody’s ever made before. Don’t freeze, don’t stop, don’t worry that it isn’t good enough, or it isn’t perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life.
Whatever it is you’re scared of doing, Do it.
Make your mistakes, next year and forever.
http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2011/12/my-new-year-wish.html