I love and hate school holidays

It's day 5 of the school holidays. Before they began, I was counting down the days because I couldn't wait to spend more time with the kids. Today, I'm counting down the days till school starts again.

I genuinely love spending time with my children. I love the slow mornings, the random conversations, the cuddles on the couch while watching movies, the fun outings. There are moments when I look at them and feel such immense love that it almost hurts.

But if I’m being honest, I also hate a lot of the school holidays. Too much of a good thing is a bad thing, and school holidays are one of those. I reckon weekends (2 whole days) are the right amount of time.....anything more than that drives me up the wall.

I really love my children. Fiercely. But I hate what they sometimes bring out of me. They bring out the best and the worst of me in equal measure.

When I’m with them, I discover that I’m capable of extraordinary kindness. I can sit and listen to a story that makes no sense whatsoever (and still exclaim at the right parts!). I can celebrate a 2-minute stick figure drawing and proudly display it on the wall like a priceless piece by Van Gogh.

And yet, astonishingly, I can become a person I utterly detest. I hate nagging. I get so sick of being the person who tells them repeatedly to pick up after themselves like a broken record; yet I end up doing it. I hate yelling. I hate having to raise my voice, but I do it because at times there doesn't seem to be any other way to get their attention.

And that’s the part that unsettles me.

My children don’t just reveal who they are; they reveal who I am. They expose my impatience, my need for control, my exhaustion, my unrealistic expectations, and my tendency to believe that if everyone would just do what I asked the first time, I could finally be calm.

The school holidays in particular bring out the parts of me that I dislike, I don’t particularly like the reflection.

I don't regret my children. Neither do I dislike being a parent. But it does mean that parenting is far more complex than the tidy inspirational quotes suggest. The same people who have filled my life with indescribable joy have also stretched me to the edge of myself. They have made me laugh until I cried and cry because I was too tired to laugh.

Both things are true.

And perhaps that’s what makes parenthood so bewildering. It is not a simple equation of “worth it” or “not worth it.” It is love and sacrifice, delight and frustration, wonder and weariness, often within the same ten-minute window.

I don't think this tension makes me a bad mother. I think it just makes me an honest one.

The school holidays intensify everything.

Pray alongside me: there are 10 more days to go.