I never grew up, and my wife was tiring of my fart jokes. Having a little boy was the logical next step.
Fart jokes never get old, do they? 
JohnT, that’s lovely. Next time you wonder how you got so lucky with such a sweet little girl, just look in the mirror and pat yourself (and the missus) on the back.
Ivylass, I’ve heard said many times (most often by my SO, who I’m sure will be a much better parent then I will, when the time comes) (yes, Shirley and Dung Beetle, I’m nearly there) that if you raise a kid well, he’ll become a great person.
But then again, what if the kid is genetaically predisposed to be a major PITA (Pain In The Ass?). What if the kid has troubles, bad health, ADD? What if she combines every characterflaw in your greater familytree into one truly obnoxious personality? Quite often kids from the same parents turn out completely different. Yet, they were raised the same.
All these stories make me think: " Sure, having great, cheerful, sweet, intelligent, loving kids is great. But what if you have just an ordinary human being? "
I never wanted kids. If it weren’t for my wife, I’d still be childfree, and I wouldn’t be unhappy about it.
But my wife wanted kids. And we discussed it. And, eventually, I blinked. And now I wouldn’t trade my daughter (just about 3 months old) for anything. She’s great, even when she’s frustrating.
I can list reasons why it’s great – suddenly, my pinkies are useful (if pruned by sucking)! – but it’s not a rational thing. I was much like you ahead of time – kids basically sounded like an unending chore.
And, 3 months in, she is an unending chore, but that’s not all she is. That’s not even most of what she is.
I love her like I love the city I live in (but a lot more). It’s a great place. It’s also a nightmare sometimes – traffic can suck, things aren’t open when I want them to, I have to sort my recycling, I feel guilty about and annoyed by the homeless people on the streets, I can’t see the stars at night. But I love it nonetheless, and the flaws are part and parcel of the whole package.
All that said, I don’t think my experience is universal. Just common. I worried about an outcome like Nametag described, and for all I know, that’s still a possibility – though I’ve bonded and don’t feel like an outsider. It helps that my wife and I have similar ideas about parenting, and neither of us feels all that guilty about using day care or babysitters to get some time to ourselves.
Those are the ordinary human beings. No one, including children, is great, cheerful, sweet, intelligent, and loving all the time. Five solid hours of fussing doesn’t endear my child to me – but so it goes. It doesn’t make me love her any less, just wish I knew what to do for her.
You don’t just “have” good kids: you have to shape them: love them, care for them, talk to them, read to them, play with them, praise them, scold them, hug them - and most of all, set them a good example. It’s hard work, perhaps the hardest of all - you’re completely responsible for laying down the foundations for them to grow into a decent human being.
Is it worth all the trouble and worry and toil? Absolutely. I’ve heard people say, “I’d never bring a child into today’s world.” Look upon having and raising a kind, loving child who’ll hopefully grow into a kind, loving adult as lighting a single candle rather than cursing the darkness.
CaseSensitive, yes, I know kids largely reflect their upbringing. But I repeat: what if a kid is, from birth, difficult and unpleasant?
If it’s your own kid, you’ll be the only one who doesn’t know it and we’ll all talk about you behind your back. 
But seriously, they don’t just pop out that way. If you do a halfway decent job on raising the kid, it’ll be a halfway decent kid. And how can you go wrong with all of us to give you advice?
Them’s the risks you take. But are you difficult and unpleasant? Is the mother? What about your parents? If so, were they always that way? If you like your immediate family – or at least most of 'em – it seems to me the chance of you spawning some rogue agent is pretty small.
Also keep in mind that, especially with kids, everything is transitory. Colic is “difficult and unpleasant,” but it doesn’t last. Kids can be easy or challenging, but they’re rarely one personality trait all the time.
Of course, there are always exceptions. And it really is a question of what you’re willing to risk. I decided I loved my wife enough to risk losing it all because the odds didn’t seem all that stacked against me.
I also recommend, if you’re really close to deciding and think you want kids, that you a) try a couple’s counselor, which helped my wife and me immensely; and b) see if you can attend a Gottman Institute Bringing Baby Home seminar, which teaches some skills in keeping your relationship happy after the kid is born while also being a good parent. My wife and I took a class in Seattle after our daughter was born, and it was great to discover that we were doing pretty well and also what we should continue to do.
You still love them to peices, even if you don’t always like them.
Our daughter tends to difficult. What is hard about her is that her “difficult” is US! She is daydreamy (me), stubborn (Brainiac4), needs to have her own way (Brainiac4), and emotionally not real stable (me).
She also is very verbal (Brainiac4 and to a lesser extent me), very smart, funny, and - when she leaves the universe she is the center of - kind. She is creative. She can be very helpful.
If you don’t want them, for Og’s sake, don’t have them. But when they are wanted they are a strange sort of wonderful - perhaps like training for and running a marathon. Their accomplishments are wonderful. Their love indescribable. Like running a marathon, its can be difficult and painful, and when you are training in 40 degrees and the rain, you wonder what in the hell you are doing. But it does make you a better person and gives you a sense of accomplishment. And every time you cross a finish line, the high is undescribible.
Shopping just before I came home and opened this thread, I passed the Mexican food section and remembered offering some salsa to my 3-year-old who explained “That’s spiz,” meaning spicy, meaning “No, thanks,” and I remembered how it felt realizing that my baby was developing her own preferences, her own personality, and how endearing I found that, how wonderful it was to have created a person whom I love so completely.
That 3 year-old just turned 19, hasn’t spoken five sentences to me in over three years, or a civil word in over four, and I still adore her. You can only imagine how I cherish her younger sister who started out sweet and has continued ever sweeter.
For over a decade, following my divorce, my life was a financial nightmare, all of it caused by having kids. I was sleeping out of my car for a while, I lived in fleabag apartments and worked multiple jobs and never took a vacation for most of the decade, whereas if I’d never had kids, I would have had a pretty cushy life, but I could never, even at my most bitter, form the words, “I wish I never had kids at all.” All I needed to do when I felt myself going in that direction, was remember their sweet, innocent faces and their endearing personalities, and I’d just head back to the salt mines for another shift.
Nametag, that must have been a very difficult post to write. And I can understand at least some of the pain that it must have caused you because my ex-wife went through something similar – she never really bonded with our daughter.
On the surface of it, it seemed very odd. Michelle was a loving, caring, person with a deep-seated need to nurture. She adored animals and had the sort of rapport with them that would have probably gotten her burned at the stake in another time. Added to this was an adolescent fascination with pregnancy and childbirth that armed her with a forbidable knowledge of these areas. Granted, she had a lot of socialization issues – painful shyness, poor self-image, a tendency toward depression. Granted, she didn’t have much (if any) real experience around infants. But she bore her pregnancy with high spirits and acute attention toward every detail. I thought that she’d turn out to be an attentive and devoted mother. I was wrong.
Kizarvexilla arrived five weeks early and via C-section. Michelle didn’t react well to the surgery and it was nearly two days before she could manage the trip to the premie nursery to get her first look at her child. When she finally cradled the five pound baby in her arms and tried to feed her, the baby had a difficult time “latching on”, and no amount of coaxing could get her to nurse normally. The first night that Kizarvexilla was allowed to spend outside of the nursery leant weight to a frightening possibility that I had only begun to suspect – that for some new parents, there was no Hollywood moment of instant, overpowering love for the baby. Maybe it was the suddenness of the baby’s arrival, or the trauma of the delivery. Maybe it was the hormonal change that went with the end of pregnancy. Maybe it was simply that the reality of it all couldn’t hope to live up to her romantic expectations. For whatever reason, the confident, informed, enthusiastic mother-to-be retreated behind a wall, too terrified to play her assigned role. As I drove Kizarvexilla home from the hospital two weeks later, I was fully aware that Michelle was in the icy grip of postpartum depression.
I hoped and prayed that things would change over time. And to a certain degree they did. Michelle started getting professional help and taking medication, which helped her depression enormously. But the bond that should have developed between her and the baby never fully materialized. It’s not that she was abusive, or actively disliked the child. She took a great deal of interest in certain aspects of the whole “mom” routine. But what she could never do was to summon any enthusiasm for actually interacting with the child. Michelle would play with her, read her books, tuck her in at night, but it was more because she wanted to relieve me of some of the burden rather than because she took any real joy in it.
For these (and other) reasons, the marriage didn’t last long, and we separated when Kizarvexilla was only about 3. Even when faced with the end of our marriage we remained on excellent terms, and Kizarvexilla never had to deal with the agony of quarelling parents. The divorce and custody arrangements were uncontested, and even Michelle agreed that it would be in everyone’s best interests to grant me full custody. We even arranged that, should something happen to me, my parents will take over as Kizarvexilla’s guardians. Michelle and I have each relocated to different cities, though we remain good friends.
Even now, though, it pains me to see how much Kizarvexilla longs for a mother’s love. Michelle sends birthday and Christmas presents, and is more than happy to talk to our now 7 year-old daughter at any time. But even a first grader is capable of grasping the significance of the fact that it’s she who has to call mommy – that mommy never calls just to speak to her. I have come to accept that Michelle is simply not capable of being the loving and devoted mother we had hoped should would be. But it will take many years for our daughter to accept that – if she ever accepts it at all.
I’m not a parent yet (give me another 7 1/2 months to let this kid grow a little;) ), but the need to have kids has always been there for me. I’ve always known I wanted kids - I’ve loved being around kids, and I’m not sure I felt like my life would be complete without a child. Granted, after meeting my husband and realizing how much he means to me, I know we could be happy without a child, but I might always feel like something was missing.
I’m scared to death, as is ElzaHub - the line came up and we both said “Holy crap, what the f*ck did we just do?” (We’re working on the swearing…). But we figure biology probably knows well and that instinct to have children will guide us - if the desire’s there, Mother Nature’ll help us not screw up too badly. For me, it wasn’t following the ‘life plan’, but it was wanting to be a parent. Had I never met ElzaHub and gotten married, I planned to adopt from China or be artificially inseminated - that desire to have a child has always been strong.
I’ve been getting teary reading some of these accounts (hormones…). I can’t wait to hold my own baby in my arms.
E.
Heh. I hope you already know that that’s what everyone does. Congratulations!
Sophie is an ordinary human being. She’s just got a good press agent. 
Seriously, though, I did note that health is one of the external factors that determine how you enjoy/experience parenthood. I am quite positive my words would be quite different, with the same child, if she had a history of illness (Sophie has only been sick enough to be taken to the doctor once in her life). So things like bad health, ADD, etc… I’m quite unqualified to answer. I’d love to say “Oh, it will be the same”, but I really can’t… so I won’t.
However, I am positive that a large part of Sophie’s personality comes as a direct result of the decisions and actions her mother and I have made over the past 5 years. When I was younger, I was of the mindset of “My kid is going to be smart! I’m going to read them Shakespeare while they are nursing, play Mozart every night as they fall asleep, and have them knowing the Krebs cycle by the time they’re five!” :smack: :wally
Wrong. The greatest gift we can give Sophie, the most important thing we can do to make sure that she has a productive and happy adulthood, is to make sure she is well-adjusted - what good is brilliance if it’s accompanied by neurosis? Everything we do, from the sterner-than-usual discipline, to the constant declarations of love and respect, to the regular schedule that is her daily life, is with that goal in mind.
So, there’s a lot of love, security, and stability in Sophie’s life, and it has made a loving, stable, and secure child. It is communicated constantly to her, both in our words
“Sophie, we love you so much.”
“Yes, Mommy. I love you too - you’re the best mommy ever!”
“Awwww” giving each other hugs “Sophie, you’re such a great child.”
“Thanks, Mommy.”
and our actions - she is cuddled, read-to, kissed, hugged, talked-to, asked-of (“Sophie, what did you think of the movie?”), and is a full participant in our lives, not just “the kid”, but Sophie, our daughter.
So, that’s how you deal with the “bad ones” - with love, discipline, respect, encouragement, and participation - exactly as you deal with the “good ones.”
What do you mean, from birth? Newborns generally eat, poop, pee, and sleep. If they’re crying all the time, something is physically wrong and need to see a doctor. I saw a documentary that their brain synapses don’t begin to connect until they’re about three months old. A newborn is hard work, you won’t get much sleep, but they don’t really develop a personality until later, so I don’t think you can call them difficult and unpleasant. The experience may be so, but the child? Nope.
Mine was difficult from birth. From refusing to latch on, to being picky about how, when and where she slept, to being demanding. And her personality hasn’t changed. They come out with personalities - actually, I think she had hers in the womb when she picked soccer time to coincide with my bedtime. When we took her to the doctor he said “you have a demanding baby, nothing wrong, some kids are like that.” I think kids who are “spirited” (Mary Sheedy Kurchina) - intense, sensitive, perceptive, persistant and energtic (not necessarily all, but some) are born that way. Dr. Sears has something he calls “The Fussy Baby.” And when you talk to parents who have “challenging” children (spirited, fussy, intense, demanding), they ususually say they came out that way. My mother says my sister did. My sister said my nephew did. My girlfriend had two children and her third came out different in a wonderful and challenging way - but he arrived home for the hospital a different child than her previous two.
I read this thread yesterday, and found it very touching.
Then I fell asleep and dreamed I fathered a son. :eek:
There are a lot of reasons I’d hesitate to be a father–JohnT’s recognition that brilliance doesn’t help if it’s not well-adjusted speaks to that–but I do know that, if I did decide to be a father, I’d mean it. None of this running-away-from-your-child crap. I know too many people who have been damaged by that.
I agree that even newborns have certain personality traits. I can attest that some babies are just more laid back than others. I think maybe the ‘difficult’ or more demanding children sometimes also get more negative feedback from their parents as a response to their personality, and a cycle begins.
Children are shaped by their parents, but as any parents with more than one child will tell you, there are other forces at work. Different children need different things from their parents and can turn out very differently, even seemingly opposite, even when raised in the same environment. I think one of the best things you can do for your kids is to treat them like individuals and forget about being perfectly the same for each of them.
As for the fart jokes…those start early! Our son is 17 months and whenever my husband lets one go our son responds “Uh-oh!” Uh-oh is right. I know as a proper mother I shouldn’t encourage it but I can’t help but crack up when he isn’t even in the same room and he hears it, and from afar you hear a little voice - ‘Uh-oh!’
Actually, in my kids’ case, it is more like setting off an oil well fire.
But last night, when my wife failed to get the snowblower started after an hour of trying (she was going to surprise me by clearing the driveway before I got home) and left to go to work, my son the sixteen-year-old got home from school, got the snowblower started in about five minutes, and snow-blew the entire driveway by himself.
He’s back in the will.
And my daughter, of course, explained in excruciating detail the whole “All My Children”-style saga of how Profit, a boy at school (yes, that’s how it’s spelled) likes her, but she likes someone else who may or may not like her, so she gave a note to her best friend to give to Profit explaining that, although she likes him, they can only be friends, and how she was worried all thru third hour, but then she met him after third hour and he was OK, so she said to her other friend…
Regards,
Shodan