“When a father brings his young children to a playground, it’s his responsibility to watch them”
When I saw your Quick Q asking readers if they got in the recommended 150 minutes of exercise each week, I sighed and turned the page. I have an “on-again, off-again” relationship with exercise… and right now, we’re definitely in an “off-again” stage. Yes, I know exercise is important — for my health today as well as my future health. Yes, I’ve read all the research (or, okay, some of it) and I have workout routines ranging from seven minutes to 45. I’ve planned the perfect way to fit exercise into a busy day… but sometimes, somehow, it just doesn’t happen.
The way I see it: Exercise is important, but so are so many other things. Being a patient, present wife and mother. Keeping a clean, functional home. Sorting and folding laundry. Making my kids healthy meals that they’ll actually eat — or, absent that, making sure they’re fed. Meeting my responsibilities at work. Taking my kids to the doctor and dentist and for therapy appointments. Filing insurance claims. Bathing my little kids and being there to provide a listening ear to sulking, sullen teens. Exercising.
So, yeah. Is it any wonder that sometimes exercise falls off the list?
What I’ve learned is that — like so many busy mothers — I can’t get to everything on my to-do list. Life is a constant rehashing and reassessing of priorities. And yes, exercise often falls off the top of the list when it’s competing with a real and present need for one of my kids (or my own sanity). And I really think that’s okay — or it will need to be.
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