Me time guilt

It’s a beautiful sunny Saturday and your child bounds into the room and asks if you want to play outside with them.

This sounds great to you. Not only does your child want to spend time with you but they want to play outside as well. Far away from that hypnotizing TV.

The only hitch is that you earmarked this time for yourself. To work on your career, spend time on your hobby or even just quietly sit in the bath.

So you want to say no, but you know you would feel extremely guilty if you did.

It’s such a difficult moment because you rank family time as vitally important and you could try explaining it to your child but it would be expecting a lot for them to understand.

The paths out of this sticky situation are pretty much infinite.

You could push your ‘me time’ back to later in the day.

You could give in for today, as how often does this scenario come up?

Or you could compromise with your kid and say: ‘I’ve got to do something now but what about in an hours time?’

What I would say is I don’t think you should make a habit of giving in every time because that leads down the slippery slope that is resenting others.

You definitely don’t want to become a bitter old crank who holds a grudge against everyone else because you gave in every time.

Those people are hard to hang out with!