DitchDkids Was Born Because Parents Need to Step Out of Kids’ World

A baby needs the body. A toddler needs the eyes. A small child needs help with the shoe, the spill, the fear, the snack, the toilet, the question, the story, the fight, the climb, the fall, the crying, the “look at me.”

Children can be wonderful and still fill the room.

Their thoughts fill the room. Their questions fill the room. Their hunger, shoes, stories, fights, toilet needs, spills, fears, jokes, climbs, falls, and “look at me” fill the room. When several little children come close together, parents can live almost entirely inside kids’ world for a season.

This is not because the parents are doing something wrong. Even the most well-meaning, well-organized parents can still have little time left over for each other, even when they are enjoying their children. A baby does not need attention the same way a ten-year-old needs attention. A toddler does not carry himself through the day the way a bigger child can. Small children need the parent’s hands, eyes, body, mind, patience, voice, and nearness again and again and again.

So the husband and wife can love the children deeply and still feel their own world getting smaller.

Their talks become child-shaped. Their timing becomes child-shaped. Their food becomes child-shaped. Their sleep becomes child-shaped. Their plans become child-shaped. Their thoughts keep bending back toward who needs help, who is crying, who is hungry, who is quiet in a suspicious way, who took off the shoe, who needs the toilet, who is climbing something that should not be climbed.

By the time husband and wife find each other, they may not be angry. They may not even be miserable. They may simply be full of kids’ world.

Kids’ thoughts. Kids’ needs. Kids’ timing. Kids’ questions. Kids’ managing.

DitchDkids was born from that. Exhaustion is part of it. Crisis can be part of it. But DitchDkids is older than collapse. It belongs to daily marriage. Spouses need sacred time together every day, in hard seasons and comfortable ones. Marriage cannot live only on whatever is left after the children, the house, the work, the noise, and the next small emergency have taken their share.

The fun is not that the children are gone. The fun is that nobody is yanking the marriage back into kids’ world every three minutes.

Husband and wife need time where they are not mainly answering, correcting, feeding, washing, finding, fixing, carrying, calming, and watching. They need time where they can look at each other without the next child-task standing between them. They need time to be lovers, friends, playmates, companions, and two people who still enjoy belonging to each other.

DitchDkids gives them a place to decompress from kids’ world, kids’ thoughts, and kids’ managing. A couple can arrive tired and quiet. Another couple can arrive rested and playful. Both still need the same sacred thing: protected husband-wife time that does not have to fight for its life against every other need in the house.

A husband combs his wife’s hair because there is time to touch slowly. A wife rubs his feet because care belongs between them too. They cook without rushing, not with one ear waiting for a cry. They swim without stopping every two minutes to count heads. They make ice cream and eat too much of it. The children are loved, cared for, safe, and not forgotten. But for that time, the marriage is not being interrupted back into management.

The children get something too. They get a break from parents being over them all the time. No mommy and daddy watching every move, correcting every mistake, stepping in for every wobble. They clean up after themselves and someone else praises them. They are polite and someone else notices. They apply common sense and it works outside the house too. Some of the things mommy and daddy were trying to teach them start making sense in the wider world.

The parents step out of kids’ world for a while, and the children step out from under constant parent oversight for a while. The marriage gets room. The children get practice. Everybody returns with a little more air.

That is why every district needs DitchDkids.

Parents with several small children do not only need occasional rescue when they are collapsing. They need a normal, expected, protected way to step out of kids’ world and return to each other. Not after years of depletion. Not after the marriage has gone dry. Not after they have forgotten how to laugh without checking who is calling.

Daily. Naturally. Without guilt.

Because children may fill the room, but they must not fill the whole marriage.