Just a few off the top of my head.
1. When people ask you 'How old are your kids?', you provide figures from 5 years ago --and believe them to be true.
2. When, on the rare occasion you buy a present for your children, you buy them something they've outgrown ages ago.
3. When you try and strike a conversation with your kids, there's this air of unnecessary stranger-to-stranger cocktail dinner awkwardness hanging above you all.
4. When you're not around, your children don't look for you. When you're around, they'd feel better if you weren't.
5. When major school events and extra curricular milestones come around, your kids don't even ask if you're attending. They immediately assume you won't.
6. When you break a promise, your kids are fine with that. It's not like it's the first time.
7. When you engage in some physical interaction with your children, your kids give you that look that screams 'Child abuse!'
8. When you FINALLY try to parent them, your kids give you that look that screams 'Who are you to parent us?!'
9. When you look for yourself in your children, you don't find even the slightest smidgen. It's as if they were never your children at all.
10. When the Developmental Psychologist asks your kids to draw a family picture. your image doesn't even make it on the paper. And yet to your kids, the picture is complete.
It's a given that parenting is one tough business. But the simple act of BEING THERE --being a familiar, warm presence in your children's lives --means you've already succeeded most of the way.
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