Viewpoints: All I wanted was an empty house. Now I want my kids back

Prefer us on Google "By the time school was about to start, I was ready. I felt guilty at how ready I was. I was ready to drop them off at school and have other people spend time with them and feed them and keep them occupied. I was ready to have my time back," writes Sona Movsesian. Illustration by Jim Cooke My 5-year-old twin boys, Mikey and Charlie, started kindergarten a couple of weeks ago, marking the end of their preschool careers. They walked into class wearing backpacks full of back-to-school supplies, like markers and glue. With their summers in the rearview mirror, they stepped into a world not with circle time or naps, but with desks, textbooks and a more mature curriculum of ABCs, rhymes and yes, even simple addition. They're in the big leagues now. By the time school was about to start, I was ready. I felt guilty at how ready I was. I was ready to drop them off at school and have other people spend time with them and feed them and keep them occupied. I was ready to have my time back. I was ready to sit in silence and answer emails in a timely manner instead of prefacing every response with a meek 'sorry for the delay.' I had put them in daytime camps throughout the summer, but once those camps ended, with my husband at work, it was just the two of them and me. Surely, I could hang out with my own little tornadoes and get things done, right? In my mind, they would be preoccupied with Lego bricks or Magna-Tiles or Zoobs while I would be tidying things up around the house and getting a few work-related tasks done. No. That did not happen. None of that happened. Nothing of the sort happened. My kids wanted me as close to them as humanly possible. They wanted to play but only if I was playing, too. If I had the audacity to hop on the computer, they interpreted my stagnant position as an invitation for them to climb me like a jungle gym. My head and shoulders became leverage for them to get as much height as possible. Elbows were liberally used, heads collided and personal boundaries ceased to exist. I wasn't a human being to my children — I was a play apparatus. I went to bed bruised, beaten, with 10,000 unread emails and gleefully happy.