Performance parenting

My small son took a swing at me hours into the start of our summer holiday. He was mad that I had asked him to remove his thick, full-body Spider-Man suit as he dripped in sweat after a three-hour drive.

He is usually a pretty chipper 3½-year-old. Friends and teachers comment on his kind nature. But he overheats and, predictably, simmers over into meltdown. He did it again during a bike ride on day two (still insisting on wearing that damn suit).

And again on day three when we were at the beach with his baby sister who can't really move, but he insisted was going to somehow escape control of all seven adults on the scene and bob away in the sea.

The baby sister is very cute. And very expressive. She has just turned 1, but she knows what she wants. It is a shame she can't use words to tell us. She just yells while we guess. And what she really wants to do is bum shuffle towards death-defying stairs.

As a parent, these scenarios are pretty typical of certain phases (I hope). But for the first time, we were on a holiday with another family of four, sharing a Cooks Beach bach in Coromandel for five nights. Nearby, we had other friends who we would see for strolls, swims and seltzers.

The weather was perfect. The days filled with shared caregiving and breaking away from each other for solo happy hours. The kids stayed in their beds most of the time. Everyone got their 5+ a day most days, and bodies were washed in a combo of showers, paddling pools and buckets.

But when we got home I couldn't shake the feeling I had failed in my first real performance as a parent. It was the longest I had spent with many other people since becoming a mum nearly four years ago.

During the trip I was tired a lot of the time – heck, we all were with 5.30am starts and sometimes midnight finishes. There were a couple of days I didn't feel like happy hour.

One day I couldn't stop helicopter-parenting play in the estuary. The show must go on, but I couldn't keep up with the chilled out beach mum vibes I was hoping would come naturally.

I apologised to some friends for not seeing them enough, and to others for seeing them too much. I was worried about how they may have judged my parenting style, I was confronted by my parenting being on show, and trying to be a helpful partner. And also trying to enjoy a vacation with the girls.

The juggle – parenting, friendship, relationships, emotional labour – doesn't go on holiday.