The loneliness of the parent

Parenting can be lonely. Despite our best efforts to understand and support one another, Amie and I still cannot fully grasp the experience of the other. I suspect this is common, just the process of becoming a father can be lonely.

When Royal trips and hurts himself, it’s right for a parent to comfort him. But he will only accept comfort from Amie. Even if she is not at home and I’m right before him, he will wait as long as it takes for Amie to return and violently reject empathy and comfort from anyone else. It was the same with Graham and, while I thought it might have been because he’d bonded more closely with Amie, that does not hold up with Royal.

If Graham needs something, mostly he’ll seek Amie out. He will walk right past me to ask Amie if she’ll get him a snack, make Royal return his toy, or play with him. He will reticently ask me only when Amie turns down his request and tells him to ask me instead.

In the first case, Amie does not completely understand my daily endurance to maintain an empathetic response. It’s not simply that she is more empathetic than I (although she is), her empathetic responses are not spurned every day for years. My struggle is not to be shaped by my children’s response into a parent who ignores their child’s pain. To not ignore, however, means that I willingly embrace daily rejection.

In the second case, I do not fully comprehend the intensity of being the on-call parent. Amie is bombarded by requests for comfort and attention from the moment our boys wake and several times throughout the night. She’s so frequently interrupted by angry and frustrated cries that she often laments that she cannot get 30 seconds of personal care time.

There are times when I successfuly mediate an argument between Graham and Royal while Amie takes a shower. There are times when Royal rejects comfort even from Amie. It’s the intensity and duration, coupled with the expectations both of our children and our society, which drives the lonely wedge between our experiences.