Parenting Through Depression - Part 2 - Defaulting to 'No'

As my depression has progresses, I notice that I say 'no' to my children more and more often. When we go to stores, my kids ask me for things that they don't need and I find myself getting really frustrated. I hate saying 'no' to my kids so when they ask me for things that they don't need, that we can't afford, or that we just don't want to spend our money on I tell them 'no' and while this might be considered by some as "good parenting," it makes me feel like a crappy dad. And not just feel like a crappy dad, no, I also get really mad at them.

To explain it a little further, my kids get disappointed and/or upset when I say 'no' to them and when my kids get disappointed in me, or upset with me, I feel like a bad dad. I firmly believe that kids need to hear the word 'no,' so that when they are out of my house they know how to do deal with rejection, but saying 'no' to my kids makes me feel like I let them down. And while I know that I am not actually letting my kids down, it feels that way. The light wolf acknowledges that I am raising good, and resilient children, but the dark wolf wants me to believe that I'm failing as a dad. And when I feel like I'm failing as a dad, I get more mad at my kids for making me feel like a bad dad, even though it's not their fault.

And of course it's not their fault. They're kids. They're supposed to want things. I think that YouTube, social media and other crap that they see online plays a big role in my children wanting everything all the time. Seeing kids on YouTube getting everything they want from their parents makes my kids wonder why they can't get all that stuff from their parents and learning that that isn't the way the world works is a lesson we have to teach our kids that our parents never had to deal with. Also, YouTube videos never show parents saying 'no' to their children, and so my kids don't see other kids being rejected. They also never show families fighting, or arguing, or even just disagreeing, so when it happens in our house they don't know that it's actually normal and actually what a real family looks like.

Having to tell my kids 'no' all the time, in stores, but also at home, turns into a fight not because they are being unreasonable, but because I am. I don't ask my kids to do unreasonable things, but I don't have patience for them when they argue or try to get what they want. And when I say 'no' and they go ask their mom because they think she'll say yes, my shame grows deeper again because "If I were a better dad, my kids would not have to ask my wife (their mom) for her permission instead."

The other day my daughter asked me for a notepad from the package of 10 that I bought at Staples. I told her 'no,' but I didn't have a good reason. I told her it was because I didn't want her to waste the pad of paper and that when I have given them pads of paper in the past it mostly just gets thrown in the recycling bin. But so what? So what if it gets recycled? She said she wanted to practice her writing, which is something that she could legitimately work on, but I denied her that because I was just being stubborn. And part of the equation was that she wanted to work on her writing so that she could get a pad of paper, but the other part of the equation was that I didn't want her to have a pad because I didn't want to open the package and have the leftover pads just lying about in an untidy stack.

I'm going to give her one of my notepads when I get home from work.