posted in Asklemmy

Cheery@Cheery@lemmy.world
edited

Does parenting get any easier?

Hey Lemmy!

I’m a dad to a two year old boy. He’s very energetic and needs quite a bit of supervision. Other than that I couldn’t wish for a better son. I’d like to preface my actual question with saying I want to be a parent and I wouldn’t change that given the possibility.

The question is, does it get any easier? I have been stuck in a loop of wake up, take care of breakfast and other preparations, go to work, go back to parenting and maybe two hours of rest after the kid falls asleep. It feels like I don’t rest enough. I will however add that I’ve struggled with depression for the better part of a decade, I’m still pretty heavily medicated and in therapy. I’m much better than I was a few years ago, but the feeling of tiredness and lack of strength to be the best parent I can is at times getting the better of me.

I’m fully aware I put myself in this situation and I’m not sure I’d be happier with no kids. I guess I’m just looking for other people’s stories of when they were in similar situations or simply some words of encouragement.

Thanks.

ilinamorato@ilinamorato@lemmy.world

Replying to @⁨Cheery@lemmy.world⁩

I’m a dad to an 11-year-old, a 9-year-old, a 6-year-old, and a 4-year-old. I wouldn’t call myself an expert, but I have felt all the ways you’re feeling now and so I do have some thoughts.

First of all, yes, it does get easier. You’re at or near the absolute hardest part of having a young child. For my kids, I won’t sugarcoat it, the hardest part was when they were three (we called it “threenagers”), so you may have another year or two yet to go (though if you look at our age span, you’ll see that we always had another baby right around that time, too, right up until the last one who was the easiest, so take that as you will). But after that phase, I will honestly say that my kids have become four of my best friends. It’s a weird friendship, but it is a very rewarding one.

Second, there are different kinds of hard. You mentioned the rut, the exhaustion, the amplification of existing depression and anxiety, and the feeling like you aren’t strong enough to do a good job; that’s a great summary of the four different ways it gets hard. Not all of them get easier all at once, but they do all get easier. Kids grow up. That’s both a blessing and a curse.

Third, part of the way it gets easier is that you just learn better ways to deal with the stuff that’s hard. I needed a routine so that my days didn’t become a rut, and I needed to journal (my form of journaling is heavy on photography right now) so that I could see all the ways I was actually doing a good job. It sounds like you’re already medicated and in therapy (it took me four times as long in parenting to get to that point, good on you). I will be honest, I still haven’t really found a good way to get enough sleep. But I have it on pretty good authority that teenagers sleep a lot, so I’m hopeful that it’ll sort itself out soon.

Overall…well, I’ll put it like this: Last year, my oldest beat me at chess, 100% legit, for the first time. My 9-year-old is maybe the most thoughtful and empathetic person I’ve ever known. My 6-year-old just learned how to read (a bit late), I think mostly so he can play Pokemon for the first time. My 4-year-old is just so excited about everything and anything. They’re making friends and having a life outside of me, they’re helping out around the house, and they’re coming together as siblings.

Being able to write a paragraph like that is what makes it worth it, and what really makes it easier in the long run. Sometimes the greatest accomplishment is just keeping them alive for twenty-four hours (and I don’t just mean right at the beginning), but eventually you get new and different problems and they start helping with the solutions.

At the end of the day, you obviously care a lot, and that’s the #1 clearest characteristic of a successful parent. So it sounds to me like you’re on the right track.

ilinamorato@ilinamorato@lemmy.world
edited

Replying to @⁨B0rax@feddit.org⁩

That’s a good question, and I absolutely don’t mind you asking. Honestly, I didn’t even make the connection between the “threenager” phenomenon and the fact that all three of ours happened when they were new siblings until I was writing up that earlier post, so take my half-decade old memories here with that particular grain of salt; the real reason may well be “oh we never really thought about the connection.”

When we decided to go for our second, I think it was the fact that our first was a really easy one-year-old at the time, so we were feeling the hubris of new parents with an easy kid. He had been a slightly tricky newborn (medically), but then he turned into the sweetest kid, so we figured we were over the hump; he didn’t become difficult behaviorally until right around the time our second child was born. We also knew we wanted to have more than one, and had seen some research (and had some personal experience) that suggested a two-year age gap was best for sibling bonding and closeness, though I think I’ve heard that data has been questioned more recently.

And then our second was born, and life was kind of hell for a little while because she wasn’t sleeping and he was a threenager (and so you’ll note that the gap between the second and third is definitely bigger than between the other two gaps), but just like it got bad at the same moment, they both straightened up at more or less the same moment, too; he was potty trained, she started sleeping better, and they were suddenly really good friends, so we knew (or thought we knew) that the hard times would end and that we could make it through more or less unscathed.

At that point, we switched from the hubris of new parents to the hubris of parents of a big family, so after the third’s infancy was more or less fine and we made it through the second’s threenager phase, we went for a fourth, assuming we knew the drill. We didn’t; our third child’s absolutely horrible year from 2½-3½ was like nothing we’d experienced before or since. But it also ended, eventually. We had already decided even before the last one was born that we were done at four anyway, so we knew that it could only last for so much longer.

So I guess the tl;dr answer would be, ignorance at first, and after that confidence (hubris?) that we could handle it. In hindsight now, I don’t regret it. I honestly don’t even know if I’d warn new parents not to do it the way we did it if they wanted to, though I would give them the heads up that it’ll be tough for a while, and strongly recommend that they get a good community around them.

I don’t know you or your family at all, of course, so I wouldn’t counsel you either way; but I will say that the people who are unsure about whether they’re up to the task are, in my experience, the people who are most up to it. The people who are confident about it all are probably going to crash and burn, and the people who are sure they aren’t up to it are probably right. But if that worry about the first year overlapping the third is the only thing holding you back, maybe the assurance that it ends eventually will help.

(Sorry about the novel! Hope that helps.)