Underestimated Parenting

Before you are a mother you underestimate the amount of poop, vomit, and pee that will be in your life, on your hands, on your clothes, your floor, your bathtub, your bed, even your dining table at the restaurant. You underestimate the time a child takes to care for, bathing, rocking to sleep, making meals for, entertaining, running errands for, doing soiled laundry, wrestling a toddler into their car seat, cleaning up messes over and over and over. You will definitely underestimate the repetitive cartoons you will watch and that you will know the lyrics to nursery songs and rhymes backwards and forward. You will be bitten, hit, kicked, and slapped often; if you are nursing- you will have teeth marks on your nipples. The lack of sleep that will be ongoing, the number of times a week you will literally save your child’s life as you keep them from choking, running into the street, eating poison, drowning in the toilet, falling from high places, jumping off of high places, cooking themselves or sibling in the oven, or suffocating in the clothes dryer. 

But all of this is the part of parenting that isn’t the hardest. 

 

What you underestimate, no matter how many times you nanny or care for nieces and nephews- is the invisible, unseen weight of what being a parent is. 

Every choice you make, you will question whether you’ve done the right thing or the long term ramifications of how you parent your child. The constant pressure you put on yourself to be different from your own parents, no matter how great they were- to do it your way and to do it better. The daunting responsibility of knowing another human (or many) rely on you for their emotional, mental stimulation, guidance, tutelage, and physical needs. Wondering if you are saying the best thing, teaching enough, holding boundaries enough, spoiling too much, or neglecting too much. Asking the merry-go-round question of “Do they know I love them?” when you correct or discipline. You underestimate the advice from your community both young and old that will be contrary to what you are doing and read online and doubt if you are doing it best. You underestimate the way that their pain will be your pain, their crocodile tears that will make your own eyes rain. You will see your childhood replay in front of you as they navigate bullies and friendships, struggling to learn new skills, and you will continually navigate the balance of not being a helicopter parent but protecting them too. If you have a career, you will worry you are working too much away from them, if you are a stay at home parent, you will long for comradeship and adult conversations. 

You will constantly be trying to give them your all and find time for self-care in order for you to survive. Every child will respond differently to love languages and discipline and just when you think you have it figured out with one; their sibling comes along to blow all you thought you knew- out of the water. Every time your child yells that they hate you, you will think “Do they mean it?” and you will also wonder if whatever happened will be a cataclysmic personality altering trauma that someday a therapist will be listening to. 

 

As a parent, you underestimate, the times a day a child will cry, rage, and scream. But, you also underestimate the times a day they laugh- over the simplest things. You underestimate the way that a child will show you the magic of life again. Tiny things like blowing dandelion feathers or grass under their feet, a caterpillar making its way across the cement, will fascinate them. Your baby will change from scooting to crawling to walking and you will cheer for them like you have never cheered for a sports game. They will show you wonder again, in a thunderstorm, fluffy clouds rolling by, a breeze through the aspens in your yard or the music from your wind chimes. The rainbows on the living room wall from the evening sun passing through the window at four o’clock will be a highlight every day as they point and giggle, or watching the weekly garbage truck lift the trash can from the curb. Music will always be a dance party, from a tv commercial toddler toy guitar, or car stereo. They will spin in dresses until they fall down dizzy in laughter and run instead of walk- everywhere. They will skip for the joy of skipping and make messes for the pleasure of the sensation. 

You will underestimate the way that they need only you- and as exhausting as it will be, it brings with it cuddles, and boo boo kisses that seeming fix anything. It means you will sit silently watching a full moon in the middle of the night as you hum softly in a rocking chair. Morning alarms will be irrelevant, they are living breathing wake-up calls, and often they will climb into your bed between your spouse and yourself and snuggle. You can’t possibly anticipate the love you will feel when you simply glance over at them during the day, or the humor their antics will bring you. Just seeing the way their bright eyes flicker when they are figuring out a new thing; will be beautiful to you.  

Before your child, you underestimate what love is. 

  

1 Corinthians 13:4-7 (NIV)

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 

It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 

Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 

It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.