The insidious pressure of “fun”
Parenting struggle #452
Confession: Some days I exhaust myself worrying about fun.
Not for Jack’s sibling, who’s typically developing. Boredom sparks growth and creativity, after all. I’m not a concierge. My role as mother is to nurture independence, resilience and maturity.
Oh yeah, and to be her chauffeur.
With Jack it’s not so simple. With him, it never is.
Because Jack relies on Mike and me. He can’t eat a meal or put his glasses on without outside assistance. Hand over his hand or, more often, our hands doing the work. Moving him through the conveyer belt of his routine.
If there is any fun to be had for Jack, it requires us to come up with it, drive him to it, participate in it with him and then clean up after it. An experience may go smoothly or catastrophically, but for me, self-imposed pressure and guilt are a constant. Pressure to motivate myself and guilt that I have to.
For example, Jack enjoys swimming, so we try to take him to an indoor pool as often as possible. Yet everything about that experience is hard.
I feel like a martyr as I put his feet in his sandals, load up the car and buckle Jack’s seat belt. I take one for the team as I kiss and wave goodbye to Mike. While I back out the car and he watches us leave, a look of knowing sympathy passes between us. I comfort myself that he’ll do it next time. Because he always does.
And once I’m there, I’m jealous of those other “normal” parents relaxing on the bleachers while their typical kids frolic. Kids younger than Jack. And I freeze in the water, counting the minutes, wishing I were warm.
Then Jack squeals with pleasure and guilt grips my heart. That I had even considered not taking him because of all the work involved. I feel joy as he floats like a cork around the pool. But joy differs from fun—and it’s a whisper drowned out by the surfacing screams of my anxious thoughts:
Wait, Jack’s getting out of the pool. He’s done swimming but why? Is he just done swimming after 20 minutes because he’s done or does he need to use the toilet—oh wait a large group of people are heading to the family restrooms. What if all of the family restrooms are taken? Should I wait with Jack until one opens up? No that’s out, because maybe he does need to go and he’s not going to wait. Ugh. What’s my plan B? Ok, if they’re filled I’ll just take him into the women’s locker room. I’ll make no eye contact with any angry naked women and squeeze into the handicap stall with my teenage son. Can we both fit along with the monster bag containing all of our stuff plus our winter coats?
And so on. You get the idea.
Ironically, by forcing myself to take him swimming, I can fail to register that some days Jack just doesn’t feel like it. Sometimes a bath at home would do just fine. Sometimes he just wants to nap. Or bounce on his exercise ball to the beat of his music. The ball activity may not be my idea of a good time (I wish it were—that kid’s got abs of steel!), but it makes him happy and that’s the point, isn’t it?
By worrying so much about single-handedly enriching his life, I do Jack a huge disservice. Why do I obsess about his boredom when I see it as character building for his typically developing sibling?
My shame at my failure to get him more entertainment blinds me to what Jack wants and replaces it with what I feel like I “should” do as his mother. So then it becomes more about me and less about him.
Besides, who am I to solely determine what constitutes fun for another person? Why do I act as if I can single handedly control Jack’s perception of his own life? It’s my own special needs parenting arrogance, something I continue to battle even after all these years. It’s so easy to do.
So if you are also having a day where you think you are failing at fun, be kind to yourself. We get tired, lose steam, get overwhelmed. It’s called being human.
Some days you may overcome your inertia to pack up the car and take your child out for fun. But try to forgive yourself for the days that you can’t. That’s something I’m still working on.