All parents that I know have had challenges to varying frequencies and degrees, myself definitely included. It *is* hard to be engaged 100% of the time with anything, much less at an A+ level. Social media and Pintrest be damned I say!
But, another suggestion that might help is to get out of the house. Taking the kids out to a park, playground, library, or museum is a good way to pass the time with them while not necessarily needing to be the primary source of entertainment. While everyone is out of the house, there aren't messes being generated either. Win - win. Another bonus is that if I'm out of the house with the kids, then I don't feel compelled to do a million housekeeping chores because I'm not there to do them.
When my spouse is in busy season and I am the sole caregiver on the weekends, I would try to plan one big adventure and one small adventure. I got this idea from Laura Vanderkam (lauravanderkam.com). This means that one day of the weekend I would plan some sort of excursion as a big adventure (pool, hike, visit to children's museum) and then plan some sort of activity (like a playdate, art activity, smaller trip like to the neighborhood park) as a small adventure. With these two things planned, the weekends tended to pass more smoothly and quickly with less whining.
Please don't take this as writing off your comments - these are excellent suggestions! I would like to reiterate an observation that my wife and I have made to each other, and Jim Gaffigan would probably more eloquently express than I ever could. Similar to his vacation bit from one of his shows that's probably close to a decade old now: "...really that's all a vacation is, just us eating in a place we've never been...", taking kids out to the pool or the park or a hike or the museum is just taking many of the attitudes, behaviors, and struggles, and superimposing them on a different landscape.
Now, that's a particularly pessimistic and grumpy view on things I will fully admit, but it's the observation that my wife and I make. The museum or the pool might provide an activity for the kids and it's moderately distracting, but ultimately it's just me/us, with the kids, somewhere else.
In the context of this discussion, going to the train museum for 2 hours does nothing to alleviate burnout. As a parent, I love to see the imagination and awe when my son stands next to a train's drive wheel that's 3x his height, but also as a parent (only this time, burned out), I just want to have him be entertained and to take a mental break myself.
I want to spend time perusing the exhibits at
my leisure.
I want to lounge by the pool while my kids are off doing their own thing.
I don't want to have to worry about whether my almost 4 year old is going to poop in the pool.
I don't want to have to wonder whether they're going to get ticks or poison ivy on a hike.
When burnout is talked about, it sounds really selfish, and as a parent I then look at myself and get upset with myself because
I am being selfish for wanting to disengage that part of my brain for more than a couple hours a day.
CNM - I want you to know I'm not specifically addressing you in much of this response, rather I'm using it as a jumping off point for another tangent on the topic because you provided a good one. Those same people who tell you that you can do it because someone else can would look at this post and declare that I'm being selfish, that activities would take my mind off things, that my kids are only young once - and that's all great but what they fail to realize is that some people aren't as great at being a model parent as others would expect them to be and that those expectations are doing more harm than good.
When we go on vacation, one of the first things we looks to see is whether there's a kids' museum - you know the type: water table, model plane, play stores, etc - because in those places I can check out mentally while my kid is somewhere upstairs pretending to be a short order cook and I can sit and stare blankly at the 'exhibits' and for just a moment not have to think about whether my children are acting properly.
I don't have any good answers, and truth be told even when experiencing burnout, activities are still a nice distraction - but they aren't the magic cureall that some make them out to be.