I am a married working mother of two small children. What can I do to satisfy my desire to have fun?

Shrinkrap says....

It's always great to hear someone being honest about the challenge of parenting small children. As someone who once spent four hours in a Jacuzzi playing "I spy" with a six-year-old, I know how those fun sandcastles can turn into fortressed prisons from which there seems no escape.

Of course, it's not from your children that you wish to escape. What you need to get away from are the feelings of frustration, boredom and resentment that arise from being trapped and possibly even lonely for adult conversation and affirmation.

It is very challenging to be restricted to activities that only bring joy for a limited time, and a job that seems to offer a minimal sense of personal achievement.

You probably also feel like you are not growing or going anywhere in life. You are right about therapy not being what is required, for a few reasons. The first is that you need to escape your feelings, not go and wallow in them. Secondly what you are going through is normal in this phase of life. Why treat your reaction to a normal circumstance like an illness that requires treatment?

Most importantly, you have so many emotional demands overwhelming you and making you feel vulnerable - why go and open up baggage and feel even more swamped and inadequate?

The extremity of what you fantasise as the antidote shows the intensity of your feelings. Having a fantasy of doing something does not mean that is literally what you need to do. It is simply your inner expression of what you would like to feel.

What I sense you need is to feel feminine and desirable, to feel free, and to feel excited and hopeful about the promise of the future.

Ironically, it's the future you looked forward to in your youth that you are now experiencing.

Many people torture themselves and squander the opportunities of their present life by wishing to be somewhere else. The solution is clearly therefore to find a way to bring what you enjoyed about your past into your present in ways that are appropriate to your circumstances and stage in life.

Talk to other mothers of young children and not mothers of older ones who seem to have lost their memories and tell you that they didn't have a hard time.

Also consider doing what would give you not only joy, but also fulfilment. Often the need to escape into mindless activity or distraction is the misinterpretation of the more fundamental desire to experience depth, meaning and a sense of significance. Then be prepared to be creative and daring. - Leonard Carr

Supernanny Says....

Cyndi Lauper obviously felt similarly when she sang, "When the working day is done, Oh, girls,

They wanna have fu-un, Oh, girls, Just wanna have fun ."

It's worth playing the YouTube clip for fun.

Would you really want to go back to your single days?

You are painting life in the extremes - life before marriage and life after marriage, trapped or free. Is married life with children really sapping all the fun out of life?

Are you longing for the excitement and freedom of no parental responsibilities or commitment of marriage? Is this a fleeting thought - or a permanent state of mind?

The original music video of Girls just want to have fun opens with Cyndi singing the song while flouncing round her mother, who is cracking eggs into a mixing bowl in their kitchen clearly oblivious to the very notion that there could be more to life than baking.

Define for yourself what "to have fun" means for you. Write down your wish list. Chat with your husband about how you are feeling; maybe he has similar dreams of evening dates with you and romantic weekends and is just not sure how to put it into action with family commitments right now.

Therapy certainly isn't for everyone, but it sure can be useful; in fact, at the speed that we live our lives in 2010, a weekly session with a psychologist is perhaps the only time we take to reflect on our lives.

Many moms would identify with your comment about building sandcastles, but this phase of life will not last forever. By finding a balance between motherhood, career and some fun meaningful time with your husband, you may be surprised how differently you see life.

Organise a baby-sitter and tell your husband to take you out on Saturday night . and let us know what happens. - Stephanie Dawson-Cosser