Parental and marital burnout is a common fellow traveler at the end of the third parental year. It should not be ignored, any more than a lump or a polyp. And it is just as important that you fix it while it is still benign.
It seems to show up now because we finally let ourselves relax a bit, having gotten our kids talking, potty-trained (or at least started), loving and human enough to believe they will at least have a life. But that’s when we often begin wondering about our own life, sometimes for the first time in years.
Research on family development shows that marital satisfaction can get perilously low early in the lives of kids because they seem to be such huge energy sinks. Thoughts of “Are-we-having-fun-yet?” guiltily badger mothers and fathers, especially if they keep these thoughts to themselves. If you are not enjoying parenting, it may mean that you are working too hard at it. You may be allowing yourself no savor time because you are too busy whipping the process of development into a frenzy. My father’s favorite relevant quote: “Trying to teach a pig to sing is just a waste of time. It frustrates the farmer and really irritates the pig.” Return to being a parent, not a driver, and let your child return to growing instead of balking.
As for the marriage or partnership that spawned this child, it, too, is usually nurtured by a heart-mind connection that requires periodic preventive and reparative maintenance. The three-year or 36,000-mile (stairs, chasing, cruise & snooze, shopping) check-up is critical for long-term endurance, because if that machine isn’t purring along, the wheels are going to eventually come off, given the road conditions ahead.
Take time to be together and uncover who you are as adults with minds, opinions, ideas, hobbies, yearnings and dreams. Date, overnight away, lunch, whatever. Pay someone else to feed or entertain you for a change, to reverse the energy flow. Replenishing affection between adults takes conscious effort. Childcare involves so much touching, holding, carrying, bathing and comforting that adult affection can simply get crowded out of a relationship. But the replenishment of that affectional and intellectual tie between the adults will be especially important in the years to come when the older school-age child wouldn’t get caught dead kissing a parent on the cheek, much less discuss the idea!
Bottom line: you’ll be fine. Meanwhile, celebrate how far you’ve come together, and whom you have uniquely become together. These have been golden years to savor and adore. None of us would amount to anything without each other, and these early parenting years show better than any others.
