weakness

My children and I have invented a game. It is not too complicated. Daddy growls and says "I'm going to get you." The two kids then run around yelling and laughing their heads off while daddy chases them. Quite complicated. At this time in their lives, this game is one of their greatest sources of joy. They look up at me and say "I'm going to get you!" and thus invite me to chase them. How cute. The problem is they have the audacity to ask me to play at the end of a long day. They actually think I should play this when there is some exciting play the Ravens are making. As I write, I can see their eyes looking up at me. These are great opportunities to make someone very happy while having to sacrifice very little if nothing at all. Yet time after time I tell them not now, later. This situation presents two predicaments for me. The first deals with the way I relate with others. I am writing about myself as if I was another person. I am judging my actions to be loathsome. I can find everything in the world wrong with them. In 11 years of teaching and observing families, I have come to believe that the single greatest parenting mistake people make is to continually put their own needs ahead of those of their children. Yet in moments of existential angst I find myself making the same mistake. How does one relate to people in a way that recognizes that we all make these compromises, yet not dismiss the fault of these actions nor their consequences in the lives of their children? The second predicament is how to stop. I don't want to be that parent. I don't want my children to grow up thinking that I don't have time for them. Worse than that, I don't want them to think that to me, they are nothing more than something else in life I use to feel good. I don't want to objectify my children. I don't have a happy ending to any of this. I guess that is why I get life. Maybe, I might just get the chance to learn to be a better father and a better friend.