Space_Dandy
kiwifarms.net
- Registrado
- 9 de Oct, 2014
If you don't have kids, just think about having kids for a second. What comes to mind? Probably stuff like; 'bunch of whiny crying brats', 'changing tons of diapers', and 'kids are expensive!' It seems through most of my life, the general public sentiment has been, 'Having kids is ACTUALLY very challenging and expensive! Wow isn't that surprising!' over and over and over again. Its this strange paradigm where most young people are afraid of having kids and view it as a big detriment to their own success, and yet are constantly told negative facts about having kids as if its a big revelation.
Then comes parenthood, ready or not. And suddenly there's this 180, where its all positivity and everyone is acting like this is exclusively a good thing. Bring up the money concerns or anything else and its just dismissed as, 'you'll figure it out! It'll all be fine!' And... they're right. There's so much JOY in parenting that I didn't hear talked about much. Babies after like 3-4 months of age change from these sleeping crying little people, into being really fun. Just smiles all the time, they are fascinated by anything you show them, and laugh at the simplest thing. It can be a lot of fun to just play with them or watch them, they are so easily entertained that its just heartwarming and it makes you want to show them new things. I pretty much NEVER heard this discussed!
Very little of the positive aspects of toddlers either were mentioned. Just all the negative. 'Good luck keeping track of them when you're out in public! They run everywhere! They try to beg you to buy them things at the store constantly!' And then the reality is that they are so curious about the world around them they are so much fun to talk to and listen to as they have wild speculation about things. They just say the funniest things sometimes, little kids can be just a ton of fun. Also if you've raised them right, 95% of these concerns I'm hearing about are way being blown out of proportion. Just set expectations with little kids in simple, clear ways, and be CONSISTENT about enforcing them and most of that bratty behavior stops really fast. Unlike teenagers, little kids don't usually hold much of a grudge, they usually bounce back almost immediately from a stern talking to with tears and all, to playing happily 5 minutes later.
Now part of this big change for me is I hadn't been around babies like hardly ever prior to being a parent. Just no babies born in my family when I was young, wasn't around even little kids that much. Barely went over to my cousins houses, and they were mostly around my age. Just kind of isolated, so you hear all of these negative warnings and very little positivity, with very little real experiences to reckon them with, and it left me being terrified of parenthood. It took forever to feel ready. Really it was more of an accident, panicking, then becoming okay with it after the fact.
Surely I can't be the only man who has very little experience with kids and is told all of these negative things, and just gets scared off of the prospect, maybe forever. This is probably a widespread problem and contributing to our downfall in society. I know this is a generalization and perhaps your experience doesn't match mine, but I'm sure this extends to beyond my own experience.
Then comes parenthood, ready or not. And suddenly there's this 180, where its all positivity and everyone is acting like this is exclusively a good thing. Bring up the money concerns or anything else and its just dismissed as, 'you'll figure it out! It'll all be fine!' And... they're right. There's so much JOY in parenting that I didn't hear talked about much. Babies after like 3-4 months of age change from these sleeping crying little people, into being really fun. Just smiles all the time, they are fascinated by anything you show them, and laugh at the simplest thing. It can be a lot of fun to just play with them or watch them, they are so easily entertained that its just heartwarming and it makes you want to show them new things. I pretty much NEVER heard this discussed!
Very little of the positive aspects of toddlers either were mentioned. Just all the negative. 'Good luck keeping track of them when you're out in public! They run everywhere! They try to beg you to buy them things at the store constantly!' And then the reality is that they are so curious about the world around them they are so much fun to talk to and listen to as they have wild speculation about things. They just say the funniest things sometimes, little kids can be just a ton of fun. Also if you've raised them right, 95% of these concerns I'm hearing about are way being blown out of proportion. Just set expectations with little kids in simple, clear ways, and be CONSISTENT about enforcing them and most of that bratty behavior stops really fast. Unlike teenagers, little kids don't usually hold much of a grudge, they usually bounce back almost immediately from a stern talking to with tears and all, to playing happily 5 minutes later.
Now part of this big change for me is I hadn't been around babies like hardly ever prior to being a parent. Just no babies born in my family when I was young, wasn't around even little kids that much. Barely went over to my cousins houses, and they were mostly around my age. Just kind of isolated, so you hear all of these negative warnings and very little positivity, with very little real experiences to reckon them with, and it left me being terrified of parenthood. It took forever to feel ready. Really it was more of an accident, panicking, then becoming okay with it after the fact.
Surely I can't be the only man who has very little experience with kids and is told all of these negative things, and just gets scared off of the prospect, maybe forever. This is probably a widespread problem and contributing to our downfall in society. I know this is a generalization and perhaps your experience doesn't match mine, but I'm sure this extends to beyond my own experience.
