I am the youngest of 4 in my family. Growing up, I did not get to see how my parents handled things when a newborn was around, I didn’t actively pursue learning much about life with a newborn, and I was completely unprepared as a father and a husband. I mean, I read a couple parenting books and talked to some people but that was about the extent of my effort. In a previous post, I wrote about my wife’s postpartum depression. This post will focus mainly on what happened after the storm calmed.
It took my son about 9 months to really start sleeping well at night. It took my oldest daughter about 18 months. It fascinated me how quickly my attitude, desires, and humbleness shifted when I lacked sleep. It no longer was about “doing the right thing” and it became every man for himself. My wife would ask if I wanted to take the baby monitor on some nights and my immediate reaction would be to roll my eyes, change the subject, or just ignore the question.
In my personal opinion, going from 1 kid to more than 1 kid is the biggest jump in terms of effects on myself. If you don’t have kids, think about your life right now. Whether you are always “busy” or never really have anything to do, your life can consist of doing whatever it is you want to do. You can stay up late, get up early, watch whatever TV shows and movies you want, eat whatever you want, work out, read books, hang out with friends, get coffee, play on your phone or computer, go to work and stay at work for as long as necessary, and basically live how you choose to live. But all of that changes when you have kids. Literally all of it. Even if you are married, you have some responsibilities to your wife, but the majority of the time, you can do what you want. You may have other priorities like taking care of family or volunteering, but ultimately you still have a choice.
But when you have kids, most of those choices go out the window. You can certainly stay up late and get up early, but now there are kids you have to feed or get ready for school, or church, or to go to the grocery store. What used to take you a matter of minutes to do, now takes at least a half hour. Try going to bed and just leaving your 2 year old on the couch. Tell me how that works out for you. Hang out with a friend? It’s possible but you either have to get a babysitter (expensive), bring the kids (you’re not really going to hang out with your friend), or leave them with your spouse (can only do that so many times). Basically what I’m saying is that my free time became my most precious time of day. I love my kids but my free time consists of my 10 minute drive to and from work, my potty break when I’m home, and that’s about it. Unless you count the times when I randomly wake up at 4 a.m.
So how do you make the most of your free time? I found hobbies I can do for the situations and time that I have. I found that I really enjoy podcasts. So I download some podcasts and listen to them on the drive. Sometimes I’ll try an audio book. But this 20 minutes of my day in the car will typically consist of me doing something I want to do but only so much can be done while driving a car. On weekends, the kids will take naps and this gives me some time to either do some repairs around the house or do some scroll sawing. It’s a hobby that I found I enjoy, isn’t too costly, and I can do mostly without leaving the house.
Ok, all of that is great, but really, how do kids change your life? Kids pick up every little tendency that you have. It is truly amazing the things they pick up on, and truly humbling when you are yelling at your toddler to stop doing something, then ask them where he learned that, and without batting an eye they say “you”. Dang. I was never much for self reflection, I tended to forget almost everything from my past, but kids don’t let you forget. I lost my cool one time driving the kids in the car because both of them were freaking out. I pulled the car over and just started screaming at the top of my lungs. My son still reminds me of that and he was maybe 3 years old when it happened. Another time I chucked a stainless steel dog bowl across our tile floor because they were freaking out. Still get reminded of that sometimes too.
For me, those freak out moments are few and far between. The truly great moments where I see myself growing are the moments when I would have freaked out but realize they are hurting for attention, or full of emotions and they don’t know how to let it out appropriately, and I can console them. Comfort them in ways that only a parent can. That’s when you know your kids are making you a better person. Kids don’t just pick up on the bad moments of your life, they also pick up on the good things you do. Unfortunately, if you do a good thing only once, they will likely forget it, but if you do a bad thing once, they will remember it for at least the foreseeable future.
But it is cool to see the positive things that you have been doing rub off on your kids. Little things, like saying please and thank you, or holding the door open for people, or even reading the Bible. It’s those moments that make it seem like it’s all worth it. Those combined with the times when life just gets really hard, whether it’s work related, family related, or something else going on, and your kid comes up to you out of the blue and gives you a huge hug and looks you in the eyes and says “Dad, I love you.”
To wrap things up, it’s impossible to put into words all the different ways that children have impacted me. Do children suck the life out of you? Yes. Do they bring you more joy than almost anything else possibly could? Yes. I am extremely grateful for the gifts that God has given me and I pray that I can lead them properly.