The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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This is all times. There aren't any times not like this.
My father bought himself a shed, installed an air conditioner, reptile cages, and bookshelves, and called it his study. I am not currently in a stage of life where I can do that. Despite having the physical space available, I do not currently have a room of my own. As an introvert, this is stressful, but the alternative was to not get married and have children. The alternative was never to be socially "on" all the time in my own house.
My daughter is much more extroverted than my husband or I. When we're both on break together, she will talk six hours a day if I let her. It's not really a conversation most of the time. She talks at me, nonstop. She won't even watch a TV show if I ask her to, or will bring the TV show to my lap, to watch it there. Her younger sister is more introverted, and likes to play with her for a while, but then plays by herself. Older daughter gets offended and angry, nobody in the house can match her social energy. She also gets home from school and I from work, and she wants to talk about imaginary worlds, rainbows, unicorns, princesses, and magic. Very seriously. For hours. I have no idea what to say, there's nothing I can say that makes a dent, that goes anywhere I could possibly want to go conversationally. I suppose when she's older she'll be more fun to talk to? She's fun to go on outings with. We all do very well on hikes, trips, going out to see new things. It's been dusty and miserable this week, though.
Of course I prefer to see my actual friends and talk with them, and my friends who married each other and also have three small children are planning to visit tomorrow, I will make them lunch, and I'm excited about it. But a person cannot enjoy only their husband's company and seeing their friends once a month, and all other adult venues are fundamentally childcare. Work is childcare (I teach 700 children at my job). Church is childcare. Shopping is childcare. Public events are childcare. All times and places are childcare.
I don't know what your wife or children or the general situation is like. Does she have a space she can go to and read a book or do something quietly? Do you? When do you have time to write on a message board?
On work-days my wife shares child care duties with her mother, and I sometimes drop in after work to take the kid out of depressed-couchbound-woman-land to hit the playground. When the child is in Kindergarten, my wife has half the day free to do as she please. And then she has pretty much the entire weekend off - seriously. Sometimes she does some light household work, but mostly she just cooks and then nothing. - , and from Friday evening to Sunday sleepytime it's dad time for as long as the kid is awake. She's pretty much like your older daughter: demanding of attention, always has her mind set on an activity or topic of conversation and tolerates no deviation from that, and can get very angry if she doesn't get her way. I guess that's how she keeps busy during weekdays, when everyone around her is trying as hard as they can to stare at their phones and forget their physical existence. On the weekends I make it very clear that it's dad-time. She gets attention all day long, no distractions, but she needs to play by Dad rules, which means no sweets, no screens, no screaming, being outdoors whenever possible and we get some chores done during the day. It works. We both have a good time, get things done, and for all that she gets to talk my ears off about volcanoes and the TV shows she watches with her mother and whatever imaginary game ruleset she just invented for the umptenth time in a day, but she has to do so while we get groceries, clean up the living room, or take a walk to check on what flowers are growing this time of the year, and sometimes those activities even break through and grab her attention and the topic of conversation shifts to what we're doing.
I have time to post on messageboards either after getting her to sleep, at which point I should be sleeping myself, or during work-days. Such as now.
I'll readily grant that our situations are not comparable. My observation is simply this: Trying to run and hide from the child to stare at a screen instead makes people miserable. Maybe alter the structure of your days or week to make a little room for yourself? Get your husband to take the kids for a while?
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