Been there, now I get nostalgic when I hear crying kids.
And another comment I'm making recently is ... "Everyone says they want to have a baby, but nobody ever says I want to have a teenager!" It's probably for the best people don't think that far ahead. I'm growing gray hair at a prodigious rate right now, and my oldest still has six months before she's actually a teen.
Ah, the threenager!
Spoiler alert: even more tantrums, which also last longer and are trickier to defuse. Talking them out of one gets more difficult, as the kid will likely talk back, and might even catch you in the act of committing logical fallacies, because in this period of time, their 3yo brain works better than your sleep-deprived one.
On the other hand, the feats of logic my kid performs to argue their case - hearing them almost makes up for all of it.
It is awesome. Teenagers are the best age group there is.
I highly suggest that people take a book or two on parenting and seriously adopt what they have to say. Raise your kids from a young age on the premise that you want to have a relationship that will last till you die.
(In my experience, the best book I've read is "Raise your children without raising your voice".)
Set aside time and effort to make the relationship work for real. This is an investment and will not invest itself.
Religion is important, family is important, cellphone use should be filtered and limited in a matter-of-fact way from when they are first getting a cellphone. [OK, phones are a big deal to get right, but this is not a blog.]
The result is relationships with your own kids that have unbounded energy, talent, resources, interest, etc. - that are just going out on their own to explore the world and conquer it.
Well, well, worth the investment.
Yes, parenting can be challenging and a lot of work at times. However, it’s silly to let the first few difficult months define decisions that impact the entire rest of your life.
It’s not that we forget that the early months are difficult. It’s that we realize they’re temporary and that they’re worth enduring.
I have several videos of things I don't remember doing or saying.
When I read that, I thought to myself: if I don't take others into account, what do I personally want? We now have one daughter and there's not going to be more kids.
Tweens, on the other hand... ugh, lots of fun in different ways, but lots more worry & stress too. And if I'm to believe my own mother, this does not recede when they leave home as adults, it actually gets worse.
Yes, there were other challenges as he got older. But the sleep deprivation of that first period was awful in a way that is difficult to put into words.
But whichever way it turns for someone, what you note is true: sleep deprivation is awful, and it's hard to describe just how much and how.
There was an eerily accurate joke I read long time ago, that infants can be effectively modeled with a Finite State Machine. That time was, for me, the easy mode. Now my 1.5yo is Turing-complete and subject to halting problem (in more than one meaning of the term), and the almost 4yo is pretty much uncomputable by this point :).
Yes, but I also meant that 12 years old is easier 10 years old is easier then 8 years old who is easier then 6 years old. You have to micromanage less and less. You can completely forgot or just once in a while check whole areas of care - like hygiene. 12 years old takes showers without prompt and plans for them. The homework is mostly autonomous too. Being on time for extracurricular activities mostly just happens without me actively doing anything.
> But the complexity of their emotional life increases too.
Yes, but that does not make it harder. It makes it closer to what adults do, closer to what I know. Once in a while there is complex problem and once in a while they change and you suddenly have to to adjust to new behavior.
Talking about emotional problems is easier with 12 years old then with 3 years old, because I do not have to simplify that much. The debate is getting closer to how I normally talk and think. With 3-7 years old, I always had to think in advance about how to simplify my thinking.