Parents need their time, too

The literature is crammed full of a solitary recommendation: do stuff with your kids. Turn off the TV, hide the hand-held video games, Velcro their sneakers and get active.

Easy for them to say. I bet that most PhDs who write parent self-help books don’t have any kids. Why? Because they’ve spent the bulk of their adult lives in school, studying behaviour instead of living it.

What if the shoe’s on the other foot? Instead of not enough time spent with the kids, you can’t get a minute away from them?

Plenty of parents are in this category. Family lives away, no support network; they’re pretty much left to their own devices to entertain, educate and ensure that the kiddies are healthy, wealthy and wise.

Sure, you go to work, but some say that’s their quiet time. Hard to believe that work, especially these days, is a respite, what with phones ringing all day, orders to deliver and customers to satisfy.

That’s the word, though, and once upon a time such talk used to surprise me. Why wouldn’t you want to hang out with your kids, particularly when they’re young? They’ll have no interest in you once they reach grade school age. As soon as a peer group’s established, parents are redundant save for their usefulness as a taxi driver.

So whenever I’d hear that a parent needed The Great Escape, I’d just shake my head.

What was up with that?

However, my opinion has changed. Moms and dads do need a little downtime; a chance to pursue their individual interests without someone yanking on a pantleg, spilling a cup of chocolate milk or battling a sibling for a crayon.

It’s good for all concerned to have those moments of relative peace, and not while you’re at work, either. I enjoy cutting and splitting wood, riding the bike for a while in hot weather, reading a wickedly suspenseful novel or just sitting.

You can’t imagine the bliss associated with simply parking in a comfy chair and doing nothing. For most harried parents, it’s like winning the lottery.

Of course, it never lasts. It’s as fleeting as Kevin Federline’s fame, but like a sinful dessert in the midst of a diet plan, man, it feels good.

That’s not to say I don’t love doing things with our kids. Just the opposite. We had breakfast in bed Tuesday morning and they were so thrilled by such a deviation in our routine that they polished off pancakes and milk so quickly I was sure they had stashed the goods under the pillows.

We had a blast, and that was cool. They got dressed, breezed into daycare full of P and V and I went to work in a pretty good mood. Talk about win-win.

As much as this means to us as parents, my and wife and I still crave the time in-between, probably because it’s as rare as hen’s teeth right now. And when it occurs, it’s a revelation.

You could spend it picking up the toys, doing laundry, dishes or sweeping the floor; all that good stuff.

Or just stop and feel the slow, rhythmic pulse of your body. We don’t do enough of that in any circumstance and believe me when I tell you, it’s well worth it.