I kind of want to put together a tip sheet for life, but alas, I am still trying to figure life out. I am still trying to figure parenting out, too, but it is a narrower slice of the pie. With that in mind, here are 10 Parenting Tips No One Ever Tells You:
10. Your most precious pictures are of your children together, but they will never ever want to pose together. Just to find a picture of our two children together for this entry, I had to scroll back over a month and go through the hundreds of pictures I have taken during that time. Even then, the first one that really works is this picture above where Daniel is reading with Annika and neither knew I was taking the picture.
9. After 638 questions in an hour, your brain will start to melt. Will and I are both inquisitive people. We both have PhDs and appreciate the value of curiosity. But, dear word, if I have to hear one more question in the next five seconds about the theoretical properties of black holes or event horizons, I am going to lose it.
8. If you didn't drink before children, you probably will after. Do you know why there are so many jokes about moms and wine? Because it is true. I have never been much of a drinker, but the time in my life when I usually had a drink on more nights than not was when Daniel was a baby and Annika was a four-year-old, and the stress from 5 to 8 p.m. each night was so high that I developed a sudden and new-found love for beer after the kids were in bed. Life is much calmer now, but I am sure if we had Imaginary Baby #3, I would down Moscato every night after the kids were asleep.
7. If you were boring before children, you will actually be LESS boring after children. This is something where New Math actually makes sense. Will and I used to spend our pre-children time going to movies, eating out, reading, and being boring together. Now we spend our time going to children's movies, eating out at McDonald's, reading children's literature, and being LESS boring by comparison because now so many of our peers are boring, too.
6. Your life is not over, it's just different. I think there is so much attention placed in the popular press about how once you have children, you become a shell of your former self. This is probably because we were boring and shells of ourselves long before children, but I think there are so many things that we do now that we did not before children - like running (both of us), book clubs (me), being more involved in church (both of us), or lawn maintenance (Will - poor guy).
5. Ages 5 through at least 10 rock. You hear a lot about the terrible twos, the even terrible-er threes, the F-U fours, and then the angst of the teenage years. There are not a lot of terms, however, for the time of elementary school/middle childhood. Based on my experience so far, it is because it ROCKS. So fear not, parents! This is a truly awesome time where your children are old enough to be independent but still young enough to think that Mom and Dad are totally awesome.
4. Other parents are your lifeboat. There is a lot of media attention focused on the fact that parents today are much more likely to live away from family and lack a lot of built-in support networks. While this means that we can face much more isolation than in generations past, it also means that so many other parents are in your same boat and are willing to help. When I think of our tribe, I am so blessed to have my sister and brother-in-law in town and all of our parents a few hours away, but I am just as blessed with our church friends and family friends and other caring adults who also love our children. It Takes A Village To Raise A Child is a cliche because it's the truth.
3. Whatever you do becomes your children's "normal." I feel that our children have so much more than Will and I did growing up....and I am sure our parents feel even more this way, given that they experienced no running water, one-room schoolhouses, etc. And sometimes this infuriates me. For example, our family went on a cruise in January 2012, and our children have been asking every other day when we are going to go on another one again. "Don't you understand that a cruise is a very special and expensive and rare thing?!?" And they do, but do not. Because it is something that we have done in their formative years, and it seems "normal."
2. No one will touch with a ten-foot pole when your children are old enough to stay home by themselves. Or play outside in the yard by themselves. Good luck researching this online, because really, if you are thinking about this, you are clearly a negligent parent and are asking for CPS to come banging down your door. Your best bet is to ask other parents their own strategies or guidelines, preferably during a moms' night out when alcohol is involved.
1. You will never be this loved again. My friend Jen posted this lovely image last night and I cannot get it out of my mind. "On those days when you are feeling stressed out, touched out, and depleted, just remember that you will never be this loved again. One day you will long for their affection." And....Ugly Cry commencing, now.
What would you add to the parenting (or career, or life) tips that no one ever tells you?
1 comment:
Never use the phrase "I will never" or "my child/children will never." It's generally a Murphy's Law that once you utter those phrases about parenting or your children, your "never" is staring you in the face as "reality." :)
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