Because I know what it is to “enjoy” people. I enjoy the heck out of my friends. We have a blast! I also enjoy concerts, books, debating and driving much faster than I really should.
Being a parent is a completely different experience.
Being a parent means being the trampoline against which they bounce. I am the reality they are testing. I am the feedback. I am watching them fail and helping them recover.
I am also very tired.
That’s not to say that I don’t see and respond to their beauty. Beauty, humor, humanity, grace – it’s all there. I do my best to acknowledge it.
But it’s not necessarily fun, and I don’t always enjoy it.
Honestly, I think it’s healthier for my kids that way. If they were to be “enjoyable” to me, they’d need to act a lot more like my peers. Which hardly seems fair - they’re not 40. Plus it doesn’t work anyway; the first time something exciting happened in my career I told them about it and they couldn’t have cared less. Of course not. Because they’re children.
My kids are not my friends, they’re not pets, they’re not hobbies; they’re noisy, self-centered, impatient little people who are doing their best to grow up. Sometimes none of us enjoys the process. I don’t think that’s bad.
The only reason I dislike this idea is that it suggests that you can’t enjoy being with your kids when they’re older.
But it is a good idea to kinda hold on to those memories of your kids as they’re growing up. They genuinely are special and will never be replaced by photographs or videos, and it’s a different relationship to anything you have with an adult.
Well, yeah, and so is everything else about life. Every phase has particular attributes that can’t be repeated.
How about if I just do my best to love them? I’m sure I can do that. Much easier than “enjoying” things that are well out of my comfort zone. I don’t want them to be restricted to things I can enjoy.
It’s OK as a platitude, but it seems often to be offered as advice to people who are struggling with the day-to-day difficulties of raising little kids. Yeah, that’s nice that I should enjoy them while they’re young, but that doesn’t help me with the crippling ennui and depression I am suffering while feeling more like a zookeeper than a human being. (Note, I do not currently feel this way and have not for a long time, but when I had a 2-year-old and a newborn, there were some days I literally wanted to throw myself out the nearest window.)
Personally I enjoy my kids a lot more now that they’re a bit older and can actually say and do interesting things. I mean, there are moments of their baby- and toddlerhoods that I remember and cherish, but overall I’m glad they grow up, you know?
Sorry, but little kids are great. Slowly they turn, first talking, then talking back, then developing their own lives that can lead down both dark and wondrous places. I will wholeheartedly tell people to enjoy their kids when they are young. They’re innocent and unspoiled then, and all of us should regret that we ever had to leave that place. I still enjoy my kids, though they are grown and can be enormous pains in the ass. But nothing was ever better then those early years.
I think the OP is misunderstanding the phrase. It’s a relative thing – enjoy them when they’re young because they will be hell on earth when they get older.
The other thing is that when we have young kids we’re often so frazzled and overworked and overtired that we don’t have the time to actually enjoy the experience of being with them. Domestic and work schedules, financial worries, perhaps even relationship issues all crowd out the sheer joy of watching a little kid grow up.
But take heart…just wait until you’re a grandparent. * then* you have the time and space to enjoy the kids of your kids. If you do get the chance, take it…don’t be a distant grandma/pa, get in there boots and all.
Nothing beats hanging out with the little guys as they learn to walk and talk and play hide-and-seek. I rarely had the chance to actually ‘play’ with my own kids, but I now steal time from work just to make mud-pies with the grandkid. It is so cool, I recommend it as a form of therapy for when you’re feeling a bit flat. Go borrow a little kid and just do stuff. Beats Prozac anyday.
Nana-kam…who has just spent much of the day hanging out with her fave dude, aged 2.5 yrs.
This is a very sad statement and I hope you are just either overwhelmed with your responsibilities or just too tired.
My kids were always my best friends. Now that they are grown they meet me for lunch or take me out for beers after work. I treated them like the fine people I thought they would become from an early age, and they became those persons. There was no dividing line between child and adult, just different levels of responsibility.
I was sometimes busy when they would have liked more of my time and I regret that. This is where the sentiment of ‘enjoy them while you can’ comes from. Because they will grow up and move on, maybe move away, and you will feel an emptiness.
They were never a chore to get finished and be done with.
fessie, you are just too tired, take the long view. If you really feel your kids are a chore to get done with they will probably grant your wish and move away as soon as they are able. I do not read a word of love in your post.
I’ve always taken it to mean take the time to note that second part. And it sounds like you’re doing that. I used to take occasional notes of things that I happened to notice as the kids were learning things or doing things that just seemed to be quintessentially them. Sometimes I run across a note that got stuffed somewhere and it brings back a memory that I’m sure would otherwise be lost, now. (The youngest is 32.) The notes were my way of stopping to smell, and memorialize, the roses.
Of course, the phrase does often seem to be said by people who are not volunteering to, say, babysit while you get your second wind, so that you have some energy for quality time. If what the speaker really means is pipe down and act happy so that I don’t have to notice that raising kids is work, then they can stuff it.
Ditto if it’s code for ‘my kids are gone and I feel lonely’, ‘my kids don’t listen to me any more,’ or ‘I was happier when I was younger and don’t remember as much as I thought I would’. And if they’ve never had kids and/or are just repeating something that lets them tell someone what to do, for that they get pity or taken to the Pit, your choice.
When people say that you should “enjoy” your children, they don’t mean “enjoy them in exactly the way you enjoy your adult friends.”
Rather, it seems to me they are reflecting on how much children change as they age. Twelve years ago, I had this adorable two year old kid who was learning new words, discovering how much he loves cats, squealing with joy over the simplest of pleasures. That person essentially no longer exists.
Now I have a teenager (fortunately mostly delightful, though mercurial) and it is very rewarding to parent him. But the little child is gone forever. I can never again see, except through the imperfection of memory, the baby who saw a full moon for the first time, reached out his arm in a beckoning gesture, and said “Come, come.”
I wouldn’t want those days back - they were exhausting enough when I was younger, and would totally flatten me now that I am older and have less energy. But as any parent blessed with a half-way decent relationship with their older child knows, there are times when you’d like to have that sweet little kid back again, just to hear his laugh and give him a hug one more time.
I think that’s what people mean when they say “enjoy your child.” Build as many happy memories as you can of who they are as little people, because those beings will vanish forever.
I can’t say I agree with the OP. I love little kids, especially my own. Each year they grow is very different and I look forward to exposing them to things as it becomes appropriate for their age. Those time windows are fairly brief but they keep coming for a while at least. Once they are grown, that is it for the most part, but you get lots of different experiences in the first few years. I would rather a good day with my daughters than any adult.
I’m sorry fessie, it sounds like you had kids because you thought that is what you were supposed to do or just want to see the end result rather than the whole process. Not everyone feels that way. I knew what I was signing up for and would do so again.
You all are taking this way too literal and seriously, just because the first years are uniquely special doesn’t mean the later years aren’t. It is amazing to see how a young set of eyes see the world, it is a fleeting short time that will never return. In no way does that diminish the later parts of childhood and young adulthood.
There is a wonderousness about little children learning about the world. Once they learn, they never go back. (if a child does, it’s not going to be a happy occasion) Relish that while you can, I know that I’m not going to ever again try to tell my son that an open window won’t make the house sick, and have him run to his room for his toy stethoscope to prove me wrong. He’s not ever again going to see a wet footprint and squeal “Look, a clue!” I won’t get to watch him on his belly struggling to crawl 6 inches to the stack of blocks he desperately wants to knock over. Those times have come and gone.
For all the work and frustration around raising a child, get those happy moments and hold on to them.
It would probably help if I’d explained that I have twins. So every phase doesn’t happen, it HAPPENS-HAPPENS-HAPPENS. It’s been overwhelming from day one. However, it’s more blessing than not - if I’d had only one child, I’d’ve been one of those smug S.O.B.s who thinks they’re doing it right.
I have some video I shot when they were 2 or 3, I used to tape random spells when nothing was happening. This one is of them playing on the deck, my daughter watching her first bubbles drift away over the house. She chased them and called to them. They flew away nonetheless.
They just turned 8 and now Mommy doesn’t know anything. “Your 8-yr-old” (Louise Bates Ames) assures me this is a hallmark of the age.
I’m still ambivalent about the “kids as best friends” thing though. I have expectations of my best friends that I would never put on my children. I want them to be their own people.
It is fun when we’re in sync - and I want them to have room to be out of sync.
The last person who made that statement to me has a daughter who hasn’t been willing to talk to her in 20 years. The daughter skipped her own brother’s funeral (he died because he weighed 400 lbs) rather than see her parents. This woman and her daughter used to be the BEST of friends, until the daughter hit her mid 20’s and split - the son was dutiful and hung around, despite their constant criticisms.
I suspect if this woman had done a better job of seeing her children as human beings and not props to her own ego, she’d’ve had better relationships with them.
Sometimes love means letting them be who they are.
My sort of stepdaughter went through this a little younger. I well remember her insisting that penguins were not birds, in spite of all our attempts at kid friendly explanation
I think different people enjoy different stages of development, and that’s okay. It makes the other stages more challenging, but we all have our favorite stage, and when the kid isn’t in it anymore, we miss it.
I love love love 6-11 year olds. Can’t tell you why, but that age just rocks my world. They’re naive enough that watching them learn new things is a total blast, but experienced enough that they can feed, clothe and bathe themselves and don’t need constant supervision. They know a lot, but they also know what they don’t know, and they aren’t yet ashamed to admit it when they don’t know something; they’re not yet too cool to try new things.
3-4 year olds? Fuck 'em. They’re assholes, every single one. I’m SO glad my own kids are past that psychotic, melodramatic bullshit stage.
12-14? Just kill me now. It’s like 4 year olds with a better vocabulary. You take 'em for a few years, and return them when they become slightly older teenagers, okay? I’ll like them again then.
But I know plenty of people who can’t stand parenting teens, and who think preschool kids are the cutest thing ever. That’s cool. That’s why we have schools, so people who like that age can take the little bastards off my hands for a few hours a day.
PARENTING IS REALLY REALLY HARD. It’s okay if you don’t enjoy every minute of it. I don’t know anyone with a job who enjoys every minute of it. You enjoy the good moments, sure, but you’re not going to love every moment of it. No one does, and the ones who claim they did are either lying to themselves or experiencing the fuzzy brain of nostalgia.
…but all that being said, I do already miss the feel of my son’s little arms reaching to circle my neck. He’s 19 now, and an awesome person, but he’s all muscley and beard scratchy, and I’ll never see his particular “pouty lip” and baby giggle again. The great thing about having my kids 12 years apart is that I learned stuff like that, and I do pay more attention the second time around.
