Parents Are Sharing Some Of The Harsh Realities Of Having Kids That Other Parents Are Thinking But Just Won't Admit Out Loud
Parenthood is described as a life-changing experience. While many speak about the joys that a little one can bring you, there are also some realities to parenthood that many people might not want to admit out loud. Luckily, this Reddit thread is filled with some harsh realities of what it's actually like being a parent. These are individual experiences, but I'm sure many parents could relate to them. Here is what some shared.
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.
1."You will experience emotions with such intensity. You get to watch this little being, completely helpless and reliant on you, grow into a little human. It makes the world so much smaller and bigger at the same time. You end up comparing how you were raised with how you treat your kids. You may find wounds that you didn’t know were there."
2."Realizing that a 'vacation' is now just listening to your kids fight, having to buy expensive food they won’t eat, and not sleeping for a couple of weeks a year. There are moments when you feel like they’re enjoying things and building core memories, allowing you to feel the joy of having those experiences with them. But in the end, you’re just doing the same childcare in a more expensive place."
"When you’re a parent, you go on trips, not vacations. Often, you need a vacation after the trip."
3."I call it the 'black mirror.' I feel like kids learn way more from watching you exist than from you teaching them. Sometimes, I will see my older son speak a certain way to his brother or me or do something, and it’s like watching my bad habits or faults manifest in another being. It makes me want to be a better person in the best of times. But also, I am human, and I have faults. I get tired, stressed, and hungry like anyone else."
4."Weekends spent in your car waiting for your offspring to complete various activities."
5."That you go from home to the office to relax, as opposed to the other way around. I love working from the office on Friday. It's a work-from-home day for everyone, so my side is completely empty. I just relax in the chair, kick my feet up, and listen to some tunes without anyone bugging me."
6."Say goodbye to your disposable income and sleeping through the night."
7."Get a second fridge and watch your food bill soar. All your bills will soar. When all the bills are paid, they will break something, need a hospital visit, or an event will come up, or fate will siphon more money out of you."
8."Everything needs to be scheduled, and every minor thing suddenly takes three times longer when you have a baby. For example, you must schedule a visit to the supermarket so the trip doesn't overlap with the baby's feeding and nap times. Then, it can take 15-20 minutes just to get ready. You need to change the baby and then dress them. You need to pack the stroller into the car. You need to pack creams, diapers, and food just in case."
"Taking care of a child is also a full-time job on top of your other full-time job. You return from work, and your partner has spent the entire day looking after the child. Now, it's your turn. You will spend three hours feeding, cleaning, and playing with the child. Then, you go to bed and repeat the process the next day for 10-20 years. Weekends aren't better. You get some more free time because you have two adults in the house, but you must use that time to clean it because it's a pigsty. It's all worth it when they see you and start grinning and laughing, calling dada or mama."
9."Your life changes completely from one day to the other. You no longer go out by yourself, and if you do, no matter who's taking care of your baby or how close they are to you, the worry and anxiety of 'how is my baby?' is always there. You no longer know what not being anxious is. Even when you try to go out and have fun, you have the guilt inside of 'I have a kid; I should be with them instead of here.' You no longer can do anything by yourself. When they're babies, pretty much your life only works around your baby's naps, so you no longer can watch your show and relax, or cook and relax; in general, there's no more 'relaxing" in your life."
"I have three kids — 13, 12 and 10. I miss them as babies. Life was so much easier when they were three, two, and newborns. I was better. Now, I’m run ragged. I feel a shell of who I used to be. I also love love kids. And I’d like to say before people read further that whenever my kids are away from home, I get nothing but compliments about how well-behaved they are. So yes, this ensures I am parenting correctly, but it doesn’t change the fact that kids are different at home. They fight all of the time. It never stops from when they wake up until they’re in their room. Hitting the wall between their rooms is annoying."
"The girls fight constantly with me (mom). Like anything that can start a fight, they do it. Our youngest boy complains about absolutely everything all of the time. Oh, and he has zero hobbies, so he just wanders around the house when we are home, asking people to play with him. We live on a farm. You’d think there’d be lots of fun stuff to do, which there is, but he’d rather complain. We have a trampoline, swings, a huge sandbox, road hockey, basketball, bicycles, rollerblades, soccer, a pool ... and lots of fun stuff that many families would love to have. They're spoiled, I guess.
They are also like three little adults with their own social lives who require a driver. We have them each in a sport, which keeps me very busy driving them around.
My biggest pet peeve is probably the laundry. They constantly put the just-cleaned and folded laundry back in the laundry room instead of putting it away.
Parenting is the hardest job I will ever do. You constantly feel like you are doing it wrong, afraid of judgment from friends, family, or strangers, and have teenagers yell at you. I love those little babies. Remember to hug them all the time until they won’t let you, and never stop telling them you love them."
10."Young children don't have much sense of logic, which can be infuriating. You'll repeat yourself repeatedly until they either somewhat grasp a concept or completely ignore you anyway in favor of impulse. You will always have someone judging you no matter what you do, especially when your child is acting out in public (which is inevitable), even more so if your child has a disability of some kind. You can love your child, but not like certain phases or developments. You'll have ups and downs no matter what stage, and the unwarranted fear-mongering ('Just you wait until X age, they're worse!') from other people just makes it worse."
11."You mourn each stage they grow out of. Then you celebrate the new stage. It’s an ongoing cycle of mourning and then celebrating. You celebrate them crawling; then you realize that they’re not always going to crawl to you. You celebrate them going to school, then it hits you that you don’t have a baby anymore."
12."The love is so strong you wonder how your heart can hold it and knowing you would take a bullet, run into a burning building, or do anything for them but also have many moments (often in the same day) when you think your head will explode from your internal screams of 'I hate being a mother!'
13."There is no one single way to parent that is universally right. All children are individuals, and even within the same family, each requires their own approach to everything. Also, for future parents, prepare yourself to feel constant doubt about every decision and action you take with your kids forever."
14."You will make mistakes. There is no avoiding it. It doesn’t matter how many parenting books you read or how many kids you raise; you will screw up. When that happens, you need to own it. You have to accept the mistake and improve, and if that mistake is big enough to cause a rift in your relationship, you need to accept that, too, because trying to force a close relationship will only widen that rift."
If you're a parent and you have something to add here, share it with me in the comments below!
