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Comment by codq | Hacker News Reader

Thank you. I turned 40 this weekend, and have spent the last few months if not years wondering who the hell I am, and thinking about all the cool projects, startups, languages and learnings I'd love to explore.

However, I also have a 3-year old I'm taking care of who drains me of all my excess time and energy. I can't do any of this stuff. I'm exhausted at the end of the day, and with my 1-2 hours at the end of night after my kid goes to bed, I'm certainly not writing the Great American Novel.

Maybe when he's older I'll have time for a midlife crisis.

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> Maybe when he's older I'll have time for a midlife crisis.

If you're like me, yes. When I was 40, my daughter was 3, and I didn't have much time for worrying. Now both my kids are tweens and my direct day-to-day responsibilities as a parent have declined so much that I have plenty of time for a proper midlife crisis. It sucks more than I ever imagined, though I'm working through it and feeling a little better about the future.

I'm in your shoes, more or less, and what I panic about is the fact that now that the hands-on time with the tween is so much more optional, I could be missing out on invisible parenting opportunities by not being proactively involved. Example, kid is happy to spend all day drawing or reading or playing BS roblox games with friends. Should I have put more of a limit on this and insisted on a couple of hours a day of other activities like crafts, music instruments, or just hanging out/hooking up playdates? It's a lot easier to be lazy at this age since the kid is not actively trying to do something dangerous like play with scissors or fall into a pool.

51 with a 2 year old son (my one and only kid, who was technically impossible, hence why he is "late", but then here we are...). He's awesome, but I'm in the same place (2nd paragraph). And, even worse since I'm 51. I have to practically physically claw back any time I need for myself. It's exhausting. I'm hoping to make enough money again by next year where my partner can quit her job and my son can enter a special program (that unfortunately has 51 weekdays off, which was too many for 2 full-time parents), and the division of labor will be different.

That's how I was around 40 (though my children were 6 and 3 at the time). I'm definitely going through a midlife crisis. One thing I've learned about myself in this period (it started last year) is that there is nothing worth losing your own mental health over. If you aren't mentally healthy and stable, those you care about the most are going to suffer all the more for it. Sometimes you have to pick the least of multiple bad options, and often "powering through" is not that.

Yes, you will have more time later. Now is the time to invest as much attention as you can into your child. It is the investment you can make now that will pay off massively later on.

Recommended reading: Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers by Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Mate https://www.amazon.com/Hold-Your-Kids-Parents-Matter/dp/0375...

"mid-life" is such a varied but also changing term.

Many many moons ago said mid life crisis was when the kids were starting to get older, 16-ish or older even. Mid life crisis meant you suddenly had more time on your hands than you remembered what to do with.

Now mid life crisis is a couple of years into having kids more often than not it seems. That seems like a way different situation. On the one side you have kids that want to do their thing anyway and on the other you have a totally dependent on you and the family toddler.

You're combining empty nest syndrome with midlife crisis. They are two distinct phenomena.

You’ll get your time back as he gets older, for sure.

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