Would love to hear about the challenges of introvert dads and the struggles to reconcile needs for personal space with the ceaseless demands of toddlers
So much so that I think I might be one and done. The idea of losing more personal time makes me beyond depressed.
That's not to say that I don't love the child and that I haven't adjusted to looking after them, nor that I don't enjoy spending time with them, however it's affected my happiness in a way that doesn't add up.
For further context, it's not that I don't enjoy socialising. I think it's great, however I also absolutely must have my alone time as a no. 1 priority. While I have fun socialising, it's also something I could literally do without.
May be a muscle you train, so to speak.
The only thing that's really helped (at least in the early stages) is sleeping in shifts + biphasic sleeping. That provides me with ample time to do my own projects, assuming that the baby hasn't regressed for that day and doesn't consume all that time (which if I'm being very fair, has been a bit of an angel.)
Yours is immobile for a while still, try to enjoy that while you can.
Probably gets easier when they are in school. But you'll be at work then.
My oldest is 5, and we're just now reaching the point where he's wanting to stay up later into our adult time, but in my experience there are a lot of comfortable years that were better than the immobile stage.
But after the first 6 months or so there does gradually become those slots where you can pick up a project without neglecting the important people in your life.
And, if you’re lucky, one day your kids join in your projects and solder on next to you in companionable silence :)
I have found that having too much free time as a result of having few if any social obligations lets you invest time in more frivolous things. Do that long enough and you begin to loose focus on important tasks or goals allowing you to leave things unfinished because "there's plenty of time in the future" but that future never comes.
As a fellow introverted Dad-to-be (any day now!), I'm not that concerned about the loss of personal time. I'm more worried about whether I make a good role model and whether I'm able to keep up enough social obligations with other parents to give my kid a community to source friends from.
I guess I'll have to buckle up :-)
Of course, this also depends on your "village" and what kind of support you're getting from others.
But best of luck!
It might sound odd, but I'm trying to more or less think of it as making having a baby my new "hobby"/personal goal. I'm sure it's tiring, tedious and often uncomfortable, but it's also all novel and once-in-a-lifetime, is definitely purposeful, and a lot of other qualities I like to assign what I do in my private life anyway. Hopefully that way I won't feel like one comes at the expense of the other. What's raising a new human if not the ultimate DIY hack?
I've heard from other young parents around us that what makes the psychological difference is that having a baby is not something you can stop or return from, and that's what can make the low hours feel much harder. We'll see - others got through it!
Which I know sounds like a fun challenge on paper, but there's a reason most people fail special forces tests. So ultimately it's about finding a counter-balance to that.
What I've found at least, is that the "hacky" side of raising a newborn is trying to find ways to optimise your life in order to reclaim your old life back. In particular, trying to figure out how to get enough sleep whilst still maintaining the house etc.
Of course, these are all just words at this point to you. When you're thrust into it, you'll quickly adapt and figure out a way-of-life that works for you. But yeah, would be interested to hear back from your experience, I too started out quite optimistic about the whole experience, which then all went out the window when actually faced with the challenge.
yeah, not everyone has that. see: us. No free time. Weekends are more exhausting than weekdays.
Also, things got noticeably harder after the 18th-20th month or so, when he went from 3 naps a day to 1, and when he started being VERY mobile and thus FAR more dangerous to himself. It didn't help that I was sick the entire month of November last year (to the point of hospitalization for part of it). Her parents live 1.5 hours away and keep making excuses about visiting; my mom died in 2020 and my dad and sister moved to Floriduh just when he was born because that was already the plan before he showed up...
In my experience each time it has gotten easier as the baby gets older. The first two months are the hardest, with the baby needing near-constant attention. As they get older the burden is lower and you get more time back, though it never goes back to pre-parenthood levels.
Strict bedtimes have been a key thing for my sanity: you can't pull this off now, obviously, but by the time our kids were about 6 months old we had them on a 7pm bedtime routine that we're only just now having to vary for our nearly-5-yo. That buys back most of the evening time for adult time, which has been absolutely essential.
Six months was the threshold for me with each child where I felt like we finally were stable again and it was worth even thinking about the future.
My kid (the one and only, since he wasn't even supposed to be possible, and since we're not... doing the things that would result in more pregnancies) slept through the night after 4 months.
The really difficult part, subjectively, seemed to emerge after 20 months when he went from 3 naps a day to 1, and when he started being very mobile, putting random things in his mouth, jumping (and potentially falling), etc. etc. etc., all of which demanded 100% attention. He's now 28 months and even though he's in daycare and adjusted well to it, I'm exhausted every day after he is finally put to bed around 8. I am constantly stressed out because I haven't yet found a balance between work, him, and self-care things like an exercise/meditation/outdoor-walk schedule; structural things. Trying to set that up now actually. The lack of intimacy is a level of problem that I can't even figure out how to express though
We are definitely a one and done, although the 2+ parents say that eventually they play with each other and free you up a bit (or fight... lol)
Now, taking toddler to $event with lots of other families/children, well that's work.
I know it has made her feel bad sometimes, but I'm convinced it minimizes the damage. As parents, we can't avoid causing some emotional damage, but hopefully we can minimize it and make it a constructive learning experience.
I hope that my explicit messages teach her that sometimes Dad needs to be alone and sometimes she has to be lonely and entertain herself. Hard lessons, but lessons that need to be learned one way or another. Who knows what the chaotic passive aggressive signals my younger self used to send would have taught her.
Most adults I meet are quite boring. Children don't bore me. We have a lot to talk about, they don't know much of anything about the world.
If you learn to understand a toddlers needs they won't cry all that often.
A child resting their head on my chest doesn't hurt like a adult head does. I don't mind them being close to me they don't take up much room.
Children respect consistently enforced boundaries better than adults. Mainly beacuse its hard to punish other adults when they over step them.
Children are innocent, if they have ulterior motives they are easy to figure out. Adults aren't innocent and you have to keep your guard up when dealing with them.
I think a lot depends on how supportive your partner and care network can be, and your financial circumstances.
Personally I struggled a lot, we live away from family and my partner also works. In the end I had to accept that you only really have their adoration and attention for a limited amount of time, I put most of my projects and hobbies on hold, scaled back work a bit, gave them all the attention I could and made the most of whatever downtime available to maintain sanity. A lot of things just had to give.
My oldest is now 9 and I'm starting to see how quickly the dynamic changes, like you said about not being toddlers for long. She might already be happy to read books and play computer games by herself all day, and I sometimes need to seek out conversations to maintain a connection with her. My friends with teenagers say that they almost never see them.
I really had no idea how difficult it would be for me as an introvert / spectrum adjacent. I was never particularly reflective or insightful about my own needs for space, time and agency because these things had never been in short supply in my life before. I thought I had an idea of what it would be like - but I was a long way off. Partly I think this is because expectations of fathers today are very different to what I grew up with and what was modelled by my dad & stepdad.
On a day-to-day basis the "responsibility" side feels a lot like running a small business with your partner that provides childcare, education, housing, cleaning services, meals, entertainment etc. Your time is not your own, any commitment you make tends to be binding on your partner as well (because you are committing them to keeping "the business" running during that time) and vice-versa.
My partner is the kind of person who lives by what is filled in in the calendar, to her the "blank spaces" are waste, she will try to fill every day with appointments and commitments. For me, the "filled in" slots in my calendar are only for things I can't avoid and my life happens in the "blank spaces". That's been the biggest source of conflict in our relationship and it's required a lot of negotiation and adjustment for both of us. It surprised both of us how incompatible we were in this aspect because our time never came under such pressure before kids.
Why did we keep having more? There's a weird amnesia that can happen a couple of years after you have a baby, where if things are going ok, you sort of mentally blank out the difficulties...
I think some degree of struggle is part of the whole thing for almost everyone, for me there was just a lot of psychological adjustment that needed to happen to be a functional parent. Now I find it hard to even imagine "me without kids at this age" anymore. My life isn't what I expected it would be - it's more complicated - but I regret nothing. I feel really grateful the kids are part of my life.
Another question I have (if you have the time) is did things become more difficult the more children you have, and how so? Also, did they get more difficult as time went along, or easier? Or is it just somehow a different kind of difficulty?
I think that's my hesitation of having more than one child (I only have a 1 and a half month old, so still very early days) is that if I have a 2nd child 2 years from now based on the idea that it's easy because they're young, but when they're older might be a much larger commitment than I can imagine (driving them places, helping with homework etc.)
What I did feel was that 2+ was more "strain" - any existing relationship problems or issues (and esp. around time...) were exacerbated. If you are feeling e.g. time stress with 1 you will probably feel more with 2 and so on. For me it is something I still have to keep communicating / negotiating / working on.
Re: commitment - there's only so much attention / parental investment you will be able to give. Each child will almost certainly get less of it individually if you have more kids, whether that is play, homework help, money, driving around, or just plain paying attention to them. I tried to give as much as I was able to one and had to divide it up when we had more.
Eldest was not super pleased to have siblings / have to share parents so lots of adjustment required there. They're all obsessed with "fairness" and closely monitor everything to make sure they are "getting their share" :). There is a whole set of extra dynamics to manage.
I do think it's gotten easier (for now). For me personally the toddler years have been the most difficult, an absolutely burning need for attention, SO many questions, absolutely no boundaries. School age and up has been easier for me (so far..). Baby times are just a haze now.
The tradeoff for less parent availability is that they get to learn different things from each other. It drives me crazy when they squabble but it's learning in action, and when they get along it's pure magic. I think our family could have been "complete" with one. The increased chaos and emergent behaviours of N is great too, just different.
Thanks for the questions, I got a lot out of taking time to reflect on them.
I can only imagine what your life is like, however in a weird way, what you're doing seems incredibly brave/courageous to me. Like you've entered some kind of frontier that few would dare enter in modern 2023.
Which is funny, because a few generations back having 3 kids would have been considered average, if not underwhelming compared to the average.
I wish you all the best. From one father to another.