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'Quality' Time?

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  • pigpen
    pigpen Posts: 41,152 Forumite
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    I really dislike doing child activities with the children. I don't mind talking to them or reading (so long as they are listening!) I am happy for them to go to a variety of clubs etc

    I HATE lego and little figures and painting.. who in their right mind thought it a good idea to give a child paints? .. I will sit and colour the odd pic in their colouring books, but they hate doing that and prefer blankpaper to scrawl on.. I have the artistic ability of a fish!.. I have to tell them what it is I have drawn! I'd rather die than play schools or shops or barbies! They all have bit of a dressing up fetish as well which I refuse to partake in!

    Thankfully, as there are so many of them they are more than happy to rely on one another to do the play things with them.

    OH helps with transformers and is happy to do the odd bedtime story.. I prefer the chats! I also have them doing practical stuff.. helping load washing machine, picking up rubbish, gardening etc

    I LOVED breastfeeding.. but I detest bathtime with a passion!

    We are talking options tonight.. DS2 brought the letter home yesterday to be in.. tomorrow!!
    LB moment 10/06 Debt Free date 6/6/14
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  • Lotus-eater
    Lotus-eater Posts: 10,789 Forumite
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    Some day we'll have to do a thread about how men feel about breast feeding.....

    Not about how someone should invent a woman that has beer on tap, but watching it I mean.
    Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.
  • pigpen wrote: »
    I LOVED breastfeeding.. but I detest bathtime with a passion!

    We are talking options tonight.. DS2 brought the letter home yesterday to be in.. tomorrow!!


    Oh, I quite liked bathtime, it was good fun! (We always had to bath Tyranniri (a plastic dinosaur) as well.:)

    All the best with the options.
    (AKA HRH_MUngo)
    Member #10 of £2 savers club
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  • jennihen
    jennihen Posts: 6,500 Forumite
    Us mums!! We're all going to be beating ourselves up over something. I didn't spend enough time doing homework with them, I hated board games . . .
    Its not about being perfect - its about getting up every new day and still trying.
    My daft 18 year old just told me he loved me for no reason and my eyes have gone all blurry!!
    One life.
  • joanne0620
    joanne0620 Posts: 435 Forumite
    I love doing things with DS who's 3, every minute that I get to spend with him I class as quality time, walking to nursery in the mornings, sitting at the kitchen table and painting, bath time,story time,etc I love it all.

    To be honest I think I try to over compensate with him as I have to work full time and still can't shake the guilty feeling I have when I leave him at nursery in the mornings!:o
    **Trying my best to be the best that I can**

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  • pigpen
    pigpen Posts: 41,152 Forumite
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    Some day we'll have to do a thread about how men feel about breast feeding.....

    Not about how someone should invent a woman that has beer on tap, but watching it I mean.

    Please do.. I'd be most interested to read it!

    My XH always said he loved seeing us so close.. blah blah.. I really think he liked the fact my boobs were collossal and he got a flash a few times a day!
    LB moment 10/06 Debt Free date 6/6/14
    Hope to be debt free until the day I die
    Mortgage-free Wannabee (05/08/30)
    6/6/14 £72,454.65 (5.65% int.)
    08/12/2023 £33602.00 (4.81% int.)
  • My friend (the one who liked breastfeeding and playing shops) ran a largehouse for wayward teenagers when her children were little.

    She now has guilt trips because her son happened to mention (since he's grown up) that when he was young he'd wished they'd lived in an ordinary house and also he'd wished his dad was not a vicar.

    She is giving herself a guilt trip that she ruined his childhood and that he is permanently damaged.

    As you say, we always find something to beat ourselves up about.
    (AKA HRH_MUngo)
    Member #10 of £2 savers club
    Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds, and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology: Terry Eagleton
  • angelicmary85
    angelicmary85 Posts: 4,977 Forumite
    fernliebee wrote: »
    My pet hate is when people say "oh no it's the holidays I have to see my kid's all day." Well yeah, they are your kids? My mum used to love the holidays with us, and when I used to look after children the holidays were the best time as you had them the whole day rather than just a few hours, filled with boring homework/ dinner/ bed routine.

    A girl I work with was freaking out when she had annual leave booked becasue she had to look after her son for 12 days in a row! :eek:

    A young female family member takes the biscut though...She drops her daughter off at her dad's house on a Wednesday, dad then drops daughter off at 1st set of grandparents house on a fri who look after daughter until Sun who then drop her off at 2nd grandparents house on Sun morning and Mum gets daughter back on a Mon afternoon! :eek: :eek: :eek:
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  • I'm not the greatest at playing with my son either really and sometimes I feel a bit bad about it as it's only him (has got half-sister at his dads where he stays half the week) but now I actually stop and think about it, I probably do a lot more than I give myself credit for.

    We play games together on the laptop, board games, colouring sometimes, wii now and again, go to the park on way home from school, gardening in the spring/summer, swimming now and again and cooking reasonably regularly are the first things off the top of my head.

    But I am one of those parents who dreads the summer holidays! Half term and 2 week hols I can manage but 6 weeks nearly drives me to despair. To be fair, I'm sure he would be happy to spend every day either in the garden or at the park with a picnic, but I do feel that I need to be arranging a multitude of activities and 'fun' things to do. I didn't enjoy my maternity leave at all, and it was only 6 months back then, god knows what I'd have done with a year.

    I think I'll come into my own when he gets homework (being a trainee teacher might have something to do with it!) and is a bit older to be able to play games that involve a bit more brainpower.

    All in all, I do admit to being a bit selfish and lazy at times and just want things to be easy and run smoothly. He says he has more fun here than at his dad's though so I must be doing something right!
    Little lady arrived 13/12/11
  • Spendless
    Spendless Posts: 24,388 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper
    Sorry, maybe I wasn't clear enough.

    As many fathers think about quality time as mothers. Why not?
    My own personal experience (from RL people I don't just mean me and hubby) has been that it is more likely to be women who do the guilt trip more about things not being 'perfect' to how other people percieve 'perfect' to be- if I'm making any sense!

    For me I'm quite happy that my kids have seen more with trips. Eldest has a photo of Lowry's house that we detoured to when going to the science museum in Manchester, has also visited WW1 battlefields with his Dad, seen and heard the last post played, visited HMS Trincomalee in Hartlepool that my nan's great grandfather served on and has a key-ring made from the ship's wood from when they re-furbed it. Later this year we intend tying in a trip to family in Coventry with visiting the Cathedral and seeing a relatives name commerated there who died during WW2 when Coventry was bombed.
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