What are things that non-parents cannot understand?

Another tale of sibs with different learn-to-talk experiences. I don’t remember any of this for myself firsthand, but parents told me/us the story later.

I was kid #1 and verbal well early vs the “typical”. Went pretty quickly from noises to syllables to words to noun-verb toddler sentences and never looked back. As you can see 60+ years later I’m still full of crap I think needs saying long-windedly whether you’re interested or not.

Kid #2 was a boy 2 yr 6 months younger than I who didn’t say a word for a long time. Anyhow, they were worried, had the pediatrician involved, etc. This was early 1960s and the rest of the resources & interventions hadn’t been invented yet. It got real late with him and still no syllables, much less words.

Kid #3, also a boy, comes along 2 years 3 months later. And is syllable-izing at about the normal pace, before #2 has done much of anything pre-verbal. #2 grunts and cries & waves and pays attention and can communicate his desires with pantomime. So they know he can make noises and can think. But he isn’t / can’t communicate with anything even remotely resembling speech. Parents going ape.

One day when kid #2 is almost age 4 he’s sitting there while Mom phones the pediatrician with more worries about this unfolding disaster. He pipes up with “Don’t worry, Mom! I’m fine.” With clear diction and appropriate inflection. She damn near fainted.

Once the log jam was broken he was age typical, including better than normal vocabulary almost immediately. He did fine in school, has a degree in a difficult topic, speaks 2 languages expertly and hobbles along in 2 more, and is an eloquent writer and speaker. His work is much pithier than my wordy mental diarrhea.


IOW, this joke has a basis in real life.

Interestingly enough, he was always the most empathetic of the 3 kids by far. And it was a strong burst of on-the-spot empathy for scared-to-death Mom that broke his verbal logjam. I’ve always thought that was significant.

Non-parents can’t understand how you can love a child more than life itself yet at times have the urge to pick up that child and throw him out the window.

My youngest was another slow talker. He was not that much younger than his brother who did a lot of his communication for him, including translating his baby talk early on. And then of course as always happens in these stories, he started talking and wouldn’t shut up. I think there’s often a simple harmless reason like sibling relationships involved yet parents are overly worried about a child not talking when it is still in the normal range of development and behavior.

And of course there are times to be concerned. This is the part non-parents don’t understand, the agonizing frustration and anxiety of that period of time where you don’t know if your child is just too young to reach a developmental milestone, or there is some other problem.

This is all somewhat reassuring, thanks.

I’m the non-parent here and my wife is the parent. She has two daughters, aged 34 and 32, by her first husband. He passed away when the girls were 14 and 12. We married when the girls were 21 and 19.

The “thing” I apparently don’t get is how responsible/guilty my wife feels about her daughters. The youngest daughter was given every opportunity and assistance as far as education, ranging from emotional support to rent money to tuition and loans. She earned both a BA and an MA in elementary education. Now, at the age of 32, she waitresses a bit, couch surfs, and basically lives a life that is more similar to that of a 19 YO drop-out. I wouldn’t mind, but she complains about the results of her life choices constantly and there’s continual high-drama about money, boyfriends, employment, and living arrangements.

Now she wants to move 800 miles to live with us in our small retirement home as she tries to get a license to sell insurance in our state. Based on her history, I have absolutely no reason to believe that she would get a decent job or make enough money to even rent an apartment after a few months. I have no reason to believe that she would be able to pay us even nominal rent. I have no reason to believe that she would ever voluntarily move back out.

My wife’s response is that she feels guilty about their teen years. My wife tried to be the best single mother she could, holding down a State job that had benefits while raising two teen girls. (The older daughter earned a BA in nursing and is doing extremely well, so my wife got them both through college.) As a non-parent, my feeling is, “You did a great job and they got every opportunity. You should have absolutely no guilt and you don’t owe the younger one anything other than being a loving parent. Please don’t enable her irresponsible behavior at her age because you’re guilty about your husband passing away.” This seems to have no impact.

And I have basically the same feelings when I see parents in the media who do truly awful things (like framing an innocent person for a crime" in order to preserve their own children. I just don’t get how parents can justify basically ANYTHING because…well, they’re their kids.

PS - My parents took me to college at the age of 17 and said, “Here’s a check for $1000. We’ll send you another one each year you stay in college. Don’t come home again except to visit. We love you, but you’re an adult now.”

My nephew was a late talker. He communicated largely by pointing until he was three. He also had issues with muscle development for several years.

He just turned 18 and graduated from high school. He’s heavily involved in sports and we can’t get him to shut up.

(And, strangely, he too has an older sister.)

Oh god. This. So much this.

With all due respect and despite wishing you, your wife, and your step-daughter the very best possible outcome, I can only say this:

You, Sir, are probably screwed.

Having taught in the past and presently doing IT in the field of education, I got a real close look at parenting; the good, the bad, and the ugly. It gave me a much deeper appreciation of the good parents who are totally committed to their kids in love, time and money. The value of what they do cannot be measured monetarily. It is truly priceless!

However; as a young adult, and before I learned these things, I really had no idea what a true, total commitment quality parents make. Yeah, I was a kid myself who grew up with the benefit of that kind of commitment, but I just took it for granted. I had no real understanding of the effort it took for them to do all the things they did. It’s made me realize that, at this point in my life, I just can’t make that kind of effort. I’ve been focused on myself with all of my time and money to myself for my entire adult life thus far. It would be too much for me to give up at this point.

On a more lighthearted note… I think parents have special insight into how freaking adorable their kids are. When Wee Weasel was born I thought he was the cutest baby in the whole world. When I look back on pictures though, he’s got a scrunched in face and I’m like… I guess I had Mom goggles on? But now? Definitely the cutest toddler in existence.

On the other hand, I do know non-parents who think kids are cute, but I was never that person until I had mine, and that overwhelming feeling of just squish it now! only applies to him.

LOL! When my SIL had a baby, she told me that she’d always thought the reason new parents were reluctant to let anyone else watch their child was that no one else will loooooove and take such good caaaaaare of the baby as its mommy!!1!11! But now, she realized, it’s because if the kid weren’t her own flesh and blood, she’d strangle it.

As admitted above, IANA parent. But one of my go-to sayings abot children has always been:

It’s a darn good thing they’re cute, or none would survive to puberty!

BTW, our youngest was speech delayed, not a surprised because we were told when she was an hour old that her teeth were going to be all screwed up. My wife took her, at 2 or 3, to sign language classes which helped in that she was able to express herself. She grew out of it and spoke fine as soon as she entered school, though she did take speech classes.
She eventually had extensive oral surgery to fix her teeth, some of which were growing in sideways. But now you’d never know she had a problem.

As you might imagine, it was a complex decision with a lot factoring in. But you know what they say about nursing lowering a woman’s sex drive? In my (wife’s) experience, it’s true. Heck, her periods didn’t even resume until our son was 18 months old.

No, but I’ve seen younger brothers who have older sisters to “talk for them” take a lot longer to learn to “speak for themselves”.

To the OP: For me, yeah, it’s stressful at times and can take up a lot of time and energy, but I’ve learned not to notice it. My kids are 7 and 5, and I suspect the greatest challenges are yet to come, though. The biggest thing for me that I didn’t realize as a non-parent, is just how much my kids teach me. Because of the chaotic nature of children, I’ve learned to become much more patient and empathetic. It’s a bit of a survival instinct kicking in, because the first two years, it all was driving me absolutely batshit insane. But, slowly, I’ve adapted my thinking such that it doesn’t feel like a chore taking care of these two unbridled ids and this has spilled over into all aspects of my life. This doesn’t mean I go through life in a Zen-like state or don’t lose my temper, but I am a much, much calmer person than I was five years ago and less prone to lose my temper and much better at keeping things in perspective. It’s the damnedest thing. They’ve made me a better human being and, as a non-parent, I never expected that kind of effect.

One thing I’ve found is that you’ll go places and do things with kids you’d never do yourself.
I got to meet Adam West thanks to my first kid, my luckier wife met Iggy Pop. I hung around horses thanks to my second kid, and shoveled a lot of poop.
Our philosophy has been like Improv - say yes, assuming it is safe. You’ll never know where you’ll end up, but for us it was fantastic.

Something else that non-parents may not understand, and in fact many parents themselves don’t understand, is that many of the easy to raise children are easy to raise because they are, not because of the parenting style.

You will read here on various threads how parent trot out their experience showing that they did it “right” so their child did XYZ well, often implying or outright stating that other parents are wrong.

The reality is that while they may be good parents, they could also just simply be lucky ones.

I have a really good friend who says that had he and his wife quit having kids after the first one, he would have thought that he could write the definitive book on parenting. His older child was the ideal kid, did well in school, cooperative, no real problems, etc., etc.

But the second one came out of the womb fighting and was a constant source of headaches until they moved out, and even then some.

My daughter and I understand each other fairly well. My sister would tell me parenting tips and they worked perfectly! Then my son came along and at the same 10 months old, it just never fazed him. He just has a completely different temperament and I had to completely relearn parenting.

IMHO, parents who say they are great parents because their kids do well are more likely to be lucky than skilled or insightful.

After interacting with so many children as a teacher over the last decade, I can really see the influence of the student’s personality.

There are terrible parents. There are parents that really should take parenting classes. But I simply never assume that the parent is as good as they think.

It is my understanding that is a common phenomenon. Back in the day mothers would nurse until the child was three or so as a rudimentary form of birth control – at least to space them out somewhat.

That’s how we think of ourselves. Now that our one and only has finished college and is ready to fly the coop, we look back and feel like all we did was give him a home and feed him, with a couple of gentle nudges along the way. His stellar academic record and promising career path? His good nature and effortless way with other people? All him.

I was reminded of this poem by someone in another thread, but it’s directly relevant here: This Be The Verse by Philip Larkin.

Your parents messed you up. You will mess up your children. Your children will mess up their children. There is no such thing as a perfect parent.

All you can do is try.