I love a holiday without my children. I mean, I love my children, that’s a given. I love spending time with them, that’s also a given. And I love going on holiday with them, that too is a given (well, most of the time – no one enjoys their kid having an epic meltdown on a beach. It’s the polar opposite of joyful). But I also like time away from them, be that a night away with friends or a mini-break.
With the relentless hamster wheel of working full-time, parenting, sorting the house, shopping, sports clubs, cooking, joining the PTA (volunteering is important, no matter how busy you are), daily 6am alarms and more, sometimes you just need a moment to breathe and do nothing. And not feel guilty for doing so. It’s amazing what happens when you hit pause. But as parents, we can’t always recognise when we need to.
I ended up unexpectedly spending the weekend without my kids recently when I flew out to Jamaica to join my Dad, stepmum, and the rest of the family for a funeral. It was a wonderful, beautiful celebration of the life of my uncle Kes.
But my goodness, how the freedom of late nights with the family on my Dad’s veranda, dancing into the wee hours, knowing I wouldn’t have a 6am wake-up call took away the fear and anxiety that goes hand in hand with a late night.
I remember it now with such clarity: that feeling of talking, laughing, and dancing with, for want of a better word, freedom. It was exhilarating. I missed the kids, but to spend quality time with my family, especially with my Dad, without worrying about the noise waking the kids up, or how tired I would feel when looking after them the next morning, felt like being reintroduced to a part of myself that I hadn’t seen in a while.
Most of the mums in my life either recognise this feeling, or who have people in their lives who recognise the need for them to experience that feeling once again.
My friend looks after her niece’s five children twice a year, without fail, so that she can have a night away on her own. Not because her niece asks for it, but because my friend can sense when she needs it.
Another friend and I did something similar for a mutual friend a few weeks ago: we surprised her with dinner, a night away, and spa day so that she could have time away from parenting for the first time in five years. My friend needed a night to herself just so she could just…breathe.
Conversely though, I have many parents in my life who have never spent a night without their children, and they tend to fall into two camps (when money or childcare is taken out of the equation): those who find the mere thought of being away from their kids truly shocking, and those who feel they wouldn’t be able to cope with it because of overwhelming guilt.
Kids or no kids on holiday: there is nothing wrong with either scenario. However, I do believe that sometimes, when you’re a parent on that hamster wheel and running yourself down into exhaustion, you don’t always recognise when you need a break. This applies whether you’re working or parenting full-time.
We may be the one of the most intelligent mammals on the planet, but that intelligence doesn’t always extend to knowing how to read ourselves and understand when both our bodies and our minds are in need of a time-out. If we could learn to acknolwedge when we’ve reached that point where we need to just stop and take a breather, the impact on our mental health would be monumental.
Having children is a gift that parents should of course be hugely thankful for. But our children also deserve parents who understand when it’s time for them to take a break. Perhaps they will develop an understanding of how to read their own bodies, too, later on in life as a result.
We seem to believe that we should only stop when we have an extreme physical or mental reaction to the stress that we put ourselves under. It’s a cycle that many of us witnessed with our own parents, so perhaps it’s time for us to break that cycle, and wash away the guilt of taking time out.