“I have no time” – Mantra of the working parent

I have been trying for a while now to write a post on respectful parenting for the working mother. It hasn’t come to fruition sooner because, well, I have no time! The mantra of “I have no time” is not unique to working parents or to respectful parents. Like all mantras, it starts with a grain of truth but the more you repeat it the more of your reality it encompasses. “I have no time” has become my answer to nearly every question, my response to nearly every request; it has become my basic mode of being and that is not who I want to be.
The other morning I had an epiphany. I woke up late because I had been up multiple times with my 5 month old. I was so tired I had hit the snooze button 5 times without really waking enough to realize it. The thing that finally pulled me out of bed was not the alarm going off for the 6th time but rather my baby crying that “I’m hungry” cry. So I went upstairs to feed her. When I got her settled back down, full and dry and drowsy, I quietly shut the door behind me only to hear a sleepy 2 year old voice. “Mama?” my daughter called from her bedroom next to the room I’d just left.
I rushed into the room to keep her from disturbing the little one with her calls. It’s now 6am. I’m in my bathrobe. I need to shower, get dressed, gather my pump and my lunch and my purse and the files I brought home because I had the laughable idea I could get something done with them after the kids were in bed and I need to get out the door in less than 30 min. “Mama lay down?” my little girl asks rubbing her eyes. So I do.
At first I lay down because I think that if I keep her from waking up completely she will have an easier time going back to sleep. At first I lay down because I just want her to remain relatively quiet so her sister can drift off to sleep in the room next door. When I squeeze into her toddler bed, my daughter wraps her fat little arms around me. One is cold from being out of the covers all night. She sleeps on her back with one arm over her head. Just like I do. The other arm is warm and moist from hugging her stuffed leopard close to her under the covers. She shuffles around and begins to run her fingers over my face. Her eyes are closed. I think “I bet I can leave on time if I can get out of her room in the next minute or so and skip washing my hair today.” I’m planning my exit strategy because I have no time.
I am actively planning how to get out of one of the most peaceful, blissful, delicate, loving, memorable moments of my journey of motherhood because I don’t have time for it.
So I stop. I sink into the bed. I relax my shoulders. I breathe in her morning breath. I marvel at how long her eyelashes are. Here is this wonderful person who loves me beyond measure. Whatever consequences may befall me for being 15 min late to work, I will gladly take them in exchange for giving her (and myself) this moment. In this moment I want nothing from her and all she wants from me is my presence.
She falls back asleep. I get up and go to work. But I do so with a renewed gratitude for my life and a vow to stop poisoning my moments with the “I have no time” mantra.
Respectful parenting is time consuming. It is much harder to build a relationship with another person than it is to simply manage the tasks of meeting a person’s basic needs. It is easier to stop tantrums than to work through them. It is faster to soothe a child with snacks than to unpack the emotional complexities of their daily trials. It is less nerve wracking to keep them from climbing tall toys than to watch them try and sometimes fall. It is more difficult to model good manners and generosity than to demand pleases and thank-yous and sharing. These things take effort. This kind of parenting takes time. But I have time for that.