“But do you actually enjoy playing with the children like that?” a dear friend and experienced mother once asked me. Her question implied that there was a parallel universe in which a good mother might not enjoy playing with her children. It didn’t take long before I became familiar with that universe myself.
“Children will never tell you they’re not feeling well. They’ll tell you, ‘Play with me.'” Mums who haven’t come across this quote on Instagram are happier than the rest. They have one less reason to feel guilty. I wasn’t so lucky. After entering a world of mothers who no longer find joy in playing with dolls or toy cars, I sheepishly took my place on the naughty step. “Play is her language of connection. How will she know I love her if I don’t play with her? If I play without enjoying it, she’ll sense that my mind is elsewhere. I know little ones have a sixth sense for detecting the absence of the soul in another person…”
Where the guilt of the mother who doesn’t play really comes from
This inner voice doesn’t come out of nowhere. As far back as 1996, in her landmark book The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood, the sociologist Sharon Hays coined the term “intensive mothering ideology” to describe the cultural norm that has grown stronger in recent decades. This norm dictates that a good mother must be entirely centred on her child, guided by experts, emotionally absorbed, devoted almost full-time, and willing to suspend her own needs. Hays analysed parenting manuals and conducted dozens of interviews with mothers from different backgrounds and found this pattern everywhere, regardless of income or education. The important point is that the guilt that more and more mothers feel does not stem from a personal flaw, but from a relatively recent socially constructed cultural standard that our grandmothers, for example, had no reason to try to meet.
Why a four-year-old never gets enough of playing
At four years old, children are still learning to create their own activities, tolerate boredom, persist in independent play for longer, and cope with the frustration of another person being unavailable to play with them. On top of that, parents are exceptional sources of stimulation, responding, inventing, joking, negotiating, and balancing emotions. So, given the choice, a small child will always choose to play with a parent because it is far more engaging than playing alone.
And when the game ends and you hear “But I want to keep playing”, it doesn’t necessarily mean “You haven’t given me enough attention and love.” It may simply mean “I enjoy playing with you more than I enjoy coming up with ideas and playing by myself.” Protesting is a natural response to having something pleasurable removed, just as it is when a child’s screen time runs out. No child has ever happily switched off the screen at the end of a reasonable viewing time and said, “That’s it, I’ve had enough cartoons.” Similarly, a child who enjoys playing with a parent will never say, “Right, I’ve had enough of playing with you; now let me play on my own.” They will always want more.
Attachment theory on the need for constant availability
From the perspective of attachment theory, secure attachment does not require the parent to be constantly available. In fact, secure attachment also involves the child’s psychological independence. This develops through repeated experiences in which the child realises that Mum connects with them, sometimes says “no”, they are disappointed, Mum remains warm and predictable, and they survive that disappointment. A less discussed aspect of popular accounts of attachment theory is that it’s not only availability that matters, but also how separation is handled.
The American psychologist Edward Tronick demonstrated something counterintuitive through his famous “still face” experiment. In normal, healthy interactions between a parent and child, emotional mismatch—meaning moments when the two are not on the same wavelength—actually occurs around 70 per cent of the time. Perfect synchrony is the exception, not the rule. For a child’s development, what really matters is not avoiding these small ruptures, but repairing them—the parent returning, after a pause, distraction, or refusal, to a warm interaction. Tronick termed this process “interactive repair” and demonstrated that repeated thousands of times throughout childhood, it fosters a child’s confidence that relationship issues can be resolved. In other words, a mother who sometimes says “not now” and then returns with warmth ten minutes later is doing exactly what the research prescribes.
What a child learns when a parent refuses to continue playing
Separation is an opportunity to learn emotional regulation. When children ask a parent to play with them and are refused, they may experience boredom, frustration, loneliness, and the urge to protest. All of these emotions are part of the wide range of feelings we experience in life, and it is beneficial to learn from an early age how to tolerate them. In other words, they learn that these feelings come and go without causing us major harm. They may be uncomfortable, but they are not insurmountable.
A child who learns that there are solutions to boredom, frustration, and loneliness will become stronger and more resilient. This doesn’t mean abandoning a visibly distressed child, however, and leaving them to develop resilience alone. When they are young, children need their parents’ guidance and presence to help them regulate their emotions. Therefore, a child who experiences only minor discomfort when a game ends can benefit psychologically if their parent stays loving (emotionally present) and firm about the boundary they’ve set (ends the game).
Conversely, if a parent repeatedly gives in to pleas to carry on playing, even when they have important tasks to deal with or their inner resources are depleted, they teach their child that boredom is an emergency. If every “Mummy, I’m bored” results in Mum immediately suggesting ten entertaining activities or dropping whatever she’s doing to play with them, the child loses the chance to discover that they can be bored for a while, that it’s OK to feel that way, and that they can think for themselves and create their own game.
Why love doesn’t mean constant availability
This theory can evoke a great deal of guilt in parents who equate love with constant availability (after all, “love is spelt T-I-M-E”). Many parents also struggle to tolerate their children’s disappointment. A child’s sadness and disappointment make parents feel as though they have done something wrong. Many parents implicitly believe that a good mother should enjoy caring for and playing with her child at all times. However, loving a child and enjoying playing with a preschooler are two distinct psychological experiences.
Why the adult brain tires of play faster than a child’s
The adult brain is not always adequately stimulated by three hours of role play with dolls, building blocks, or board games designed for young children. Losing that pleasure is not necessarily proof of deficient attachment, but rather an indication of the needs of the adult nervous system.
In fact, a recent study by psychologist Natalia Józefacka, published in the journal Early Education and Development, shows that children aged three to four play spontaneously but lose interest quickly and soon need someone else to play with. It is only at around five or six that they develop the ability to organise a structured play alone and stay focused for thirty minutes or more without outside support. In other words, a four-year-old’s hunger for play has no natural saturation point that an exhausted mother could reach simply by trying harder.
How to stay emotionally connected without playing
It’s important to distinguish between emotional availability and the willingness to entertain. A parent can remain emotionally connected even if they are not playing with their child at a particular moment. One strategy that specialists often recommend is telling the child: “You’d really like me to play with you. It’s hard for you when you see that I have work to do and am getting on with it. I’m right here beside you, doing my own thing.” Psychologists say that these statements communicate three things at once: “I see you”, “You’re allowed to feel frustrated”, and “My boundary stays.”
Even if a child protests “Nobody wants to play with me”, the parent doesn’t necessarily need to convince them immediately that they are wrong. It is enough to acknowledge the child’s feelings, such as saying, “You’re feeling a little lonely,” as it is important for the parent to recognise the child’s emotions without taking on the responsibility of making them go away.
The mechanism of guilt and the trap of parental exhaustion
Sometimes, parents struggle to handle certain negative emotions in their children because those emotions resonate with something deep within their own souls. For example, if a parent has experienced feelings of being ignored, loneliness, or misunderstanding, their child’s simple disappointment may evoke a far more intense response. A diffuse guilt begins to take shape in the parent’s soul, creating a vicious circle that’s hard to break over time.
Psychologically, guilt signals that we have done something that violates our values, something that can be identified as wrong and rectified. In other words, healthy guilt is specific, proportionate, and practically useful. However, diffuse guilt, of the “My child is unhappy, so I must have done something wrong” variety, has none of these characteristics.
A parent who repeatedly humiliates or frightens a child, ignores an emotionally distressed child, uses withdrawal of affection as a form of punishment, repeatedly puts their own needs before their child’s basic emotional and physical needs, rarely keeps their word without acknowledging it and apologising, or responds with contempt or rejection to their child’s small bids for connection has every reason to feel guilty. Yet, even in such situations, the healthy response is not self-punishment, but repair: “I shouted at you and that was wrong. I’m sorry; I’ll behave differently next time.”
Sometimes, guilt signals to a parent that they are doing something wrong or that their personal balance is disrupted. However, this kind of guilt can also be a trap for parents who feel exhausted and assume that this means they are not good parents. They then try to compensate by giving their child more, which leaves them even more exhausted. This deepening depletion makes their mistakes seem all the more glaring.
This is where the research of Kristin Neff of the University of Texas at Austin comes in. She is a pioneer of self-compassion studies. Her data show that parents who are kind to themselves when they make mistakes or feel overwhelmed report lower levels of stress and anxiety. More importantly, they respond to their children’s needs with more warmth, empathy, and sensitivity than parents who are caught up in self-criticism. Neff’s research reveals that self-compassion does not weaken a parent’s motivation or standards, contrary to the fears of a mother raised on the idea that only self-discipline delivers results. On the contrary, self-compassion provides the emotional resources needed to respond to a child from a calm place rather than a place weighed down by guilt. Rather than asking how to stop the guilt, a parent would benefit more from asking what is draining their resources so badly that even the simplest demands of parenting feel insurmountable.
A mother’s audit: questions about where your energy goes
A first step could be an audit of your natural needs. Precisely because they are natural, rating how well each is being met on a scale of 0 to 10 (0 = I’m doing fine in this area; 10 = this area exhausts me completely) could provide a clear picture of what is throwing the balance off, where the greatest demands lie, and where you might need help.
- Recovery: Do you get enough sleep? Do you have quiet, free time with no fixed agenda, physical rest, and moments when nobody needs anything from you?
- Autonomy: Do you regularly have periods when you get to decide what you’re going to do next? Or do you find yourself reacting to other people’s needs almost all the time?
- Invisible work: Are you the one who carries the burden of planning, remembering things, organising meals and appointments, monitoring the emotional state of those around you, taking care of household logistics, and making decisions about the children?
- Self-care: Does your week include activities that bring you pleasure or meaning, rather than just things that are useful or necessary?
- Support: Is there another adult who consistently takes responsibility, rather than just “helping” occasionally while you remain the one who has to think of everything?
- Relationship strain: Are you also dealing with tension, conflict, loneliness, or imbalance in your relationship with your partner or within your family?
- Volume of responsibilities: Are the demands of work, money, commuting, caring for others, or running the household objectively too great?
- Expectations of yourself: Are you trying to be unusually patient, available, keen to provide enriching experiences, attentive to others’ emotions, organised, healthy, productive, and fully present all at once?
What parental burnout is, and why it matters to identify it
This audit often reflects not the worsening of a single shortfall but an accumulation of problems. Ten small cracks in how we do things can have the same effect on our nervous system as one major crisis.
However, exhaustion is not a final verdict or proof that we have done something morally wrong. More often than not, it simply indicates that we are taking on more responsibilities than our nervous system can handle without a break.
The technical term for this kind of exhaustion, specific to the parenting role, is parental burnout. This syndrome has been rigorously described by Moïra Mikolajczak and Isabelle Roskam of the Catholic University of Louvain and has since been confirmed by an international consortium covering more than 40 countries.
Invisible work: the mental load nobody sees
Unfortunately, many parents, especially mothers, operate in a climate of chronic demand, with very little autonomy. Their days are full of activities, responsibilities, and loving connections, but they have few opportunities to enjoy the freedom to choose what happens next. In such a climate, it’s no wonder that “play with me” can feel like a disproportionate burden. This is not because the request itself is particularly demanding but because it arrives at a time when the nervous system is already feeling continually drained by the needs of others.
Much of this exhaustion stems from a type of effort that often goes unrecognised. Sociologist Allison Daminger of the University of Wisconsin–Madison calls this cognitive labour: anticipating the family’s needs, weighing up options, making decisions, and checking outcomes. She shows that this invisible work disproportionately falls on mothers’ shoulders, however balanced the couple may appear on paper.
Three practical changes for an exhausted mother
Instead of trying to fix everything through a single heroic act of willpower, it is better to make three important adjustments knowingly.
The first approach is to hand over entire areas of responsibility to someone you trust, rather than delegating individual tasks one by one. There is a huge difference between asking for help with a one-off trip to the playground and handing over responsibility for afternoons entirely, including all the organisation and decision-making involved. This may seem a small difference, but to an exhausted mother it is hugely significant. In the first scenario, Mum remains the one who keeps track of everything. In the second scenario, someone else finally takes on a real share of the invisible load that she has been carrying alone until now.
The second tip is to protect a small slot in the day when you are away from your roles as mother, wife, and employee, as sacredly as your child’s sleep routine. It’s just you, with a book, going for a walk, or doing absolutely nothing productive. See this routine as a basic necessity, not a privilege earned by how much you have given so far. Any nervous system deprived of a purposeful pause ends up running in permanent emergency mode sooner or later. Incidentally, the idea of “loving yourself” and the culture of self-care address exactly this tension between healthy self-care and the guilt associated with practising it.
The third step is to give yourself permission to express your boundaries without feeling guilty. You can simply say that playtime is ending and something else is coming next. Your child can either carry on playing next to you or choose to do something else on their own. That’s all there is to it. There’s no need to justify, negotiate, or offer an extra ten minutes to make the transition easier for you and your child. Children learn about boundaries from the calm firmness with which they are stated. Explanations intended to demonstrate the value of the boundaries are pointless for the child.
“Do you actually enjoy playing with the children?” An honest answer
Ultimately, after these practical steps, my friend’s question remains: “Do you actually enjoy playing with the children like that?” Today, I would say that sometimes I do, completely, until I lose track of time, and other times I don’t at all. This says nothing terrible about me as a mother. It simply means that I’m an adult with an adult brain who has played hide-and-seek countless times, and like anyone else, I have my limits.
Our children need real mothers who are there for them, who come back for them, who sometimes say “That’s enough!” and who, precisely through this, teach them that they can survive rejection. I now believe that this is exactly what real love is, no less genuine than the hours spent on the carpet with dolls and toy cars.