I have been thinking lately. About all the things nobody ever tells you about parenting. When you are pregnant, or have a newborn people are always giving you advice. Most of the time unsolicited. But still it is pretty constant. Some people even seem to like to scare the mothers-to-be with horrible stories of 49 hour labor and that kind of thing. People will tell you how often you will have to change poopy diapers. But i do not remember anyone telling me that in a few short years there would be times I would have to hose down my child to get the diarrhea off of his head. Nobody told me I would be standing outside in 20 degree weather cleaning vomit out of my car. Granted, most kids do not throw up as much as Calvin. Come to think of it, I have never met anyone of any age who throws up as much as Calvin! But nobody tells you this kind of stuff, like how many times a day you have to use the phrase" ____ (fill-in-the-blank) does not belong in your pants!" One might think that it would be common sense, but apparently even 5-year-olds have trouble with that. I never knew that is was possible for a person to get so incredibly dirty during the course of daily activities. I mean, I don't think my kids go rolling in the mud when I am not looking, but I would have to bathe them and change their clothes at least 5 times a day if I wanted them to stay perfectly clean. I never imagined it would be so difficult to do every day things like simply getting to the car. I thought once they could walk and do some things on their own, it would get easier. I thought once they could feed themselves, meals would be easier. I also thought that once they were potty trained, it meant that all subsequent potty would be in the toilet. And what I have learned is that it does not necessarily get easier, because with each phase you just have different challenges.
Maybe there were people telling me and I was not listening. Perhaps I just tuned it out because it did not pertain to me at the time. But the good news is: as hard as things can be, there is much joy! My kids are so fun, and they can almost always make me laugh, even when I am mad. Corban can look at me, cock his head to the side and ask, "are you angry?" And if I was angry, it just melts away.
I can't even begin to imagine what nobody is telling me about teenagers!
Christopher Griffith - Art
10 years ago
3 comments:
Wow, I don't know what it will be like when my kids are teenagers... and I don't want to know! Thats just too scary to think about. Either way no one can even really warn you or tell you what it will be like, every kid is different with issues.
-Patience
Calvin and Corban are young! They have only just begun to explore their potential for chaos! Just wait until they start taking things apart in your home to see how they work (only to discover that they don't, once you've taken them apart)! And the dexterity they gain with age makes for lots of opportunities for your to practice your abilities to untie complicated knots created in sheets, shirt sleeves, jump ropes...basically anything in your home with a length exceeding 2 inches! And just when you've past the "hose them off" stage and they can actually shower themselves, they convince you to get a dog, which poops, throws up, runs away from you, and disobeys just like a 2 year old!
Nobody told me when my daughter had colic for 3 months that I would get physically sick from having no sleep. And then when she was a teenager, I agsin would get sick from no sleep. Now she is 22 and almost graduated from college and ... more to come.
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