One advantage of being a teacher is that I see so many more children than if I were just a parent. (Interesting, being a good parent and being a good teacher don’t necessarily go along. There kind are separate skills.)
I’ve been fortunate to have tutored many students, some for six or seven years now. One of my favorite people of all times is a girl just finishing up high school, and clearly one of the most emotionally mature people I’ve known in my life. Really unbelievable, you would never guess she’s only 17.
But ohmygod, what a brat she was in middle school. She almost got thrown out the second floor window a number of times. Her parents went through hell. She told me recently that there were times she knew she was wrong, that her parents were right busy she couldn’t help herself.
No doubt. I don’t want to say that there are no bad parents or that bad parents don’t lead to problems with children. Nor do I want to say that good parents do t help their children.
It’s just that sometimes the best parents in the world can’t change their kids.
Most of the friends we have that had children had them all about the same time - including us. And just as the baby boom was happening, my brother in law who we shared friends with (and who has since passed away) moved out of state. And remained child free. After a few years, when the kids ranged from “babies” to “preschoolers” (with one of two in the elementary school years), he came back for a visit and we said we’d host an event for all our mutual friends. It would start at 3pm - and we’d feed people dinner - and everyone was welcome to stay for as long as he wanted. He thought 3pm was a horrible time for a party - it should start at 8 and run until 2am.
“No one will come. Most of your friends have children. They need to get into the car and head home at 7pm for bedtime. Parties END at 8pm now.”
We indeed had a house full of people and their kids from 3 to about 7. Some people stayed until 8. And then the child free people all left and went somewhere else and we put our kids to bed. (I had my wonderful mother in reserve in case it looked like things wouldn’t wind down by eight - she could come get my kids and have them for an overnight if I was going to have loud people in my house until two in the morning).
Interesting, because we ended up with a most of our friends being the ones who had kids at the same time we did. It didn’t really start that way, but once you have kids you end up hanging out most often with the other parents because you all have so much in common. And you’ve lost a lot of commonality with the other friends because of what the title of this thread is, there are so many things the non-parents just don’t understand.
We started that way - the friends I had 25 years ago pre children are pretty much still our friends - most of whom have kids about the same age as mine. (We call that group of kids the “kinda-cousins.”) There are a few people who remained child free, and they still showed up at the 3pm parties and they still show up at the parties that now start at 7 - but everyone leaves by eleven because we are old. The ones that have had it roughest were the couple that had their kids ten years after the rest…because when the baby boom happened, enough people just moved schedules around kids - and most of the child free adapted in the interest of staying in touch with friends. When they had a kid who needed to be in bed by eight, we all had teenagers - and that leads to different demands on time.
Though the D&D group was a group of people where only we had kids - well one friend had older kids and was divorced, the kids were usually with his ex. But it was at our house. (That group now includes some of the children that were part of that baby boom).
We had the same problem. With an infant it wasn’t a big deal. As long as somebody was holding her, the baby was happy with people around and talking. Once she was a bit older, it was a problem because none of the child-free houses were setup to handle a mobile child. For awhile we compromised, and had everybody over to our house for every session. In exchange for them always having to travel, we provided all of the food, but eventually the group grew tired of that arrangement, and broke up. (Or they grew tired of my cooking.)
Later we found some groups with kids the same age as ours, and that worked great. The several locations were all setup in age appropriate ways, and the kids would rather play with each other than bother the adults.
I remember that happening to a few people. They were in the baby stage when everyone else was just getting back a little freedom. We had even run out of baby stuff to give them, those things had already been passed on to others with kids closer in age to ours.
It’s also interesting the way the parent’s age doesn’t count for much anymore, you could be 10 years older than your friends are, but if you have kids the same age you have a lot more in common than you would otherwise. What TV and shows an movies you liked growing up, or bands you listened too didn’t matter as much as your kids current interests, because that’s the biggest influence on your life.
That’s true to a point- but I remember when my son was young. Most of his classmates’ parents were close to my age. There were three or four who were ten-years older than me and one ten years younger than me. The ten-years younger one didn’t fit in well with the rest of us, but I suspect the issue was not exactly her age but related to it. She had her first kid when she was 17, when most of the rest of us had the first around 26-27 and the older group did at around 37 , which meant our lives were different in ways that went beyond what TV shows and music we liked growing up.
I can see there will be exceptions like that. When my wife was in labor, aged 30, there was a teenage girl there also, alone, not cooperating with the staff. I’m sure her life turned out much differently than ours. Unfortunately there are socio-economic conditions that create barriers between people. That’s a whole 'nother thread by itself.
We were providing not only the pizza, but the DM (and we still do - my husband DM’d for YEARS and I’ve been DMing for the last three. And we have always had more players interested in playing than we can make room for at our table (because no one wants the work of DMing, but a lot of people want to play), so the group has changed a little over time - but we haven’t had issues with the group dissolving (we have lost two to death and one to a move - and one to a second wife who wants all his Friday nights).
I didn’t realize that it would look like I was referring to socio-economic issues- I wasn’t. She was married when she had her son at 17 , is still married to the same man at 47 and the school was a non-public one where tuition was required. I was referring to other differences - like the fact that the rest of us had some experience at being adults without children and having had jobs that a full-time high school or college student couldn’t hold. When the kids were 10, the 47 year old parents were planning their retirements, the 37 year olds were listening to them and asking questions and the 27 year old was trying to get her first office job as a file clerk. Sure, we could and did talk to her about kid-related things but I don’t think she had any actual friends in that group.
I was just referring to my own experiences, not reading too much into your point. Socio-economic differences don’t have to be extreme like that, and yes, at some point enough difference in age can’t be bridged just by the common experience of raising children. I think we noticed more of this when our kids were teenagers and they gained friends with parents who lived very different lives from ours. Not all that different from the past except these were people we’d never known before. We’d had friends from many different walks of life, but those were still relationships formed over time starting when the kids were much younger.
Freddie Aguilar left home at the age of 18 without graduating from school. His father, who had wanted him to be a lawyer, was disappointed. Freddie traveled to faraway places carrying with him only his guitar. With no one to guide and discipline him, he got into gambling. Realizing and regretting his mistakes five years later, Freddie composed “Anak”, a song of remorse and apology to his parents. He went back home and asked for forgiveness from his parents, who welcomed him with open arms. After his father read the lyrics of “Anak”, the two became closer. The homecoming proved timely as his father died not long after.[2] According to Felipe de Leon, Jr., an authority on Philippine music, the song was composed in a Western style but has aspects of pasyon , a form that many Filipinos can identify with.[3]
I am living this reality! We are 38 and my friends are older than us to begin with, so they have children aged 13 to adult while we are just getting started. So far we’ve managed with having a few friends over, but once D&D starts up again I’m not sure where we will be. Seems I will have to manage the kid while my husband plays. Which is okay, he covers me on Tuesday nights while I have writers group. But we are definitely in a different life phase than our friends with older kids.
And then there are things parents of only “normal” healthy children wil never start to comprehend. Having your baby stay in ICU for a couple of months will kind of change how you think about a lot of things. But nothing more drastically as my view of new parents complaining about “a rough night”. If you know me at all: you know to shut up about that. I really try to not be dismissive, but the eyes roll on their own.
Likewise, I’m sure there are things about raising a Black child that white parents cannot understand, things about raising a Deaf child that hearing families don’t get, things about raising an adopted child that bio parents will never fully wrap their heads around…
I really, really wish the first, what?, two doctors we saw with my son had been so kind as our third (and current) pediatrician. She was the absolute only person who never, ever made me feel bad about our parenting choices, breastfeeding, co-sleeping, solid feeding and everything else included.
I couldn’t breastfeed my son, though I tried so very hard. I had eclampsia, so I was out of my head on magnesium sulfate for three or four days in the hospital. Then they discharged me and my blood pressure went through the roof. I had no idea until I took him to the pediatrician we have now - he was peeing crystals and I couldn’t stay vertical in my chair, so we both laid down on the exam table and every other person I’d talked to (pediatricians, La Leche League) had told me “oh, sometimes that happens - just wait it out,” not, “Ummm, lady your kid is dangerously dehydrated and you’re about to have a stroke,” which is what our pediatrician told us just before my son chugged two full bottles of formula and passed out in relief and I was taken to the ER and promptly given blood pressure meds that rid me of the two-week long migraine I’d had.
I don’t think a lot of people get that parenting has become so fraught with emotion and judgment that moms especially and also dads feel like if they don’t “optimize” their kids’ childhood in some way - get them into the best schools, best extracurriculars from birth - that they are a shitty parent. There is really no way to do it right other than ignore what’s right and do what’s right for you. Also, if you’re a working parent, you’re “farming your kid out to others to raise,” but if you stay at home, you’re “just” a stay at home parent. You just can’t win.
As a non-parent I don’t understand how introverted parents cope with extroverted children, who are either yelling “Mom, Mom, watch me!” “Dad, Dad, look at me!” as they do something trivial every five minutes, or spend an hour badly recounting the boring minutiae of the video game they played or show they watched.
I find it stressful to be around this type of kid who speaks more in 20 minutes than I did in half a day at their age, and if I lived with one I think I’d go insane fairly quickly.
That’s my five year old right now. “Daddy, look and me jump” kid jumps 6" “Very, nice dear.” “Daddy, daddy, watch me do a super jump twirl” kid jumps 6" and spins half way around. “Very nice, kid, why don’t you go show your mom.”
I try really hard to stop and pay attention to her but especially after COVID and being trapped in the house with her for a year it’s really hard to give her the attention she needs. Hopefully when swim lessons start Saturday she’ll have something fun to show me and then we’re doing ballet in the fall so she can learn to dance for real.
The two year old isn’t needy yet and we’ll see if that develops.
Screen time. All of the screen time. You want to watch a video on your tablet and play minecraft on the computer? Great idea, double screen time!
I’m always right in the middle between extrovert and introvert, and my wife is over to the introvert side, so we’re not too sure where the extremely extroverted kid gets it. Probably her grandfather.
Anyway, yeah, this is an aspect of the “not stopping” I mentioned up thread. Kid doesn’t care if you need some alone time to recharge, kid doesn’t care if you need to work on something else, and she certainly doesn’t care if she’s boring you out of your mind.
So “cope” might be too strong of a word. Perhaps “keep it together” is a better description of what is happening. “I’m coping with these difficulties, and feel I’m at a good place” is not what’s happening. “I kept it together through the hour long lecture about minecraft and ponies, but it’s your turn to listen now.”
Yeah. You can tell somebody medical – especially a ped – because upon hearing about a newborn their question is not, “Boy or girl,” but rather, “Is it healthy?”