OT: Things you wish someone had told you before you had kids
The lull in Treadwell/The Opening/Tim and Trey @Lebron's camp/hoops freshmen(yeah, that Mad5 thing didn't really take) information has got me to thinking...
Man, there are a lot of things I wish someone would have told me before I had kids.(Yeah, for those of you who dont know/care, I'm the tired dad of a pair of 4 month olds). And I guess I was hoping to gleen some advice from the greater mgocommunity as well. (Yeah, I know the first piece of advice is going to be not to start an advice thread on an sports blog...bite me)
The first thing I'd want to tell babyless me: Good lord you lump of crap, get off your butt and go for a run. Go lift some weights. You cannot possibly grasp how much free time you have. Do you really need to watch Rocky/Star Wars/LOTR every time they show it on cable? Believe me, there'll be plenty of time for that later. If you knew how precious opportunities for actual physical activities were going to be...
Clean out your freaking basement. You've got junk down there that you haven't touched since you moved in. If you dont get to it now, it will never ever happen.
8 words: Little Tikes Snug a Bunny Cradle and Swing(AKA IRON DRAGON). You need one of these per infant on every floor of your house. We're talking 180degree swivel, mirror ball, oscillating mobile, soothing music...if they had one in my size I'd be sitting in it right now.
Get yourself to an ACO Hardware. Find the big rolls of trash bags labeled "Ironbuilt". 50/100/150 count, whichever is cheaper per unit. Buy them all. You dont know when you are going to make it to the store. And you cannot run out of trash bags. This is not an option.
While you are at it, run down to Kroger and fill your cart with 6dbl roll packs of Home Sense toilet paper. They go on sale for $2.50 No reason you shouldn't have 5 or 6 packs stashed in each bathroom. Again, running out is not an option.
Oh, and get the big tub of Similac. I dont know who you think you are kidding with that half-sized $15 can...Running out just isn't an option...And dont worry about running out of those $5 coupons, they'll send out another batch next week.
Why didn't anyone tell me about these Kroger Comforts diapers? I wasted all that money on a Sams Club membership, (and the giant packs of huggies) and you're telling me these freaking Kroger diapers hold up just as well to blowouts and cost 6 freaking dollars for 50? I thought you guys were my friends.
Finally...Dont try to talk to your wife when there is a screaming baby in your arms/ in the room. It just doesn't end well. Whatever it is...it can wait.
Edit: Anyone have any experience with 529's(college savings programs)?
I was looking at Michigan Educational Trust, and while the idea of locking in today's tuition seems great, the suggested payments/current tuition just dont seem to add up. I ended up starting Michigan Educational Savings Program accounts for them...hoping grandma/grampa might chip in too...Can you imagine what college is going to cost in 18 years?
"Get a Vasectomy, but keep it a secret."
I don't have kids, and don't plan to have them for many years(if ever), but that seems like solid advice. You get the great babymaking sex for a long time, until she finally decides to give up on sex and start gardening or quilting(or whatever).
If everyone I talked to about it had been honest up-front I wouldn't have bothered trying until my boy was at least 3yo. Now, whenever the subject comes up, 95% of parents I talk to admit the same for their boys.
Thank god the second is a wonderful little princess, and already on her way before the age of 2.
My two kids are in the "easy" stretch of child-rearing (between toddlers and teenagers), but I'm still tired from the infant/toddler years. Still...so...very...tired. I feel your pain. I wish someone would have told me how jealous I would become of parents who have kids that easily and endlessly sleep from infancy onward! I also wish someone would have told me that my golf clubs would lay dormant for 10+ years and my recreational sporting career would end early due to child-rearing duties. I would've sold the damned clubs years ago when they were worth something.
I envy those that can afford a nanny.
I often felt that way when I was younger and my 3 children were little. Now that they are all in their late teens / early twenties, I wouldn't trade that time I had with them for all the money in the world.
Also, ( unless you're off the scale egotistical or your kid turns out to be a mass murderer) no matter what professional accomplishments you may achieve in life, in the end, what you will be most proud of is your children.
With my wife going through med school and residency I get PLENTY of time with them and appreciate it as far as that goes.
The ability to do something for myself about once a week would be nice though.
We are kindred souls. We had both of our kids during my wife's med school & residency stints. While I look fondly back at those times, the mental and physical exhaustion were very real, especially with the brutal call schedule. The one luxury I afforded myself during those days was a DVR so I could record Michigan sports and watch them if/when the kids ever slept!
I have no problem with that.
those front to back/side to side "papasan" style swings are worth their weight in gold.
Took one to florida, took one camping, etc. . . my current 10 month twins outgrew theirs way too fast :-(
No one told me how fast it would all go by. I swear my first daughter was just born a year or two ago . . . she starts 2nd grade in the fall.
Best advice I can give is "get your hands dirty". It's amazing how much you learn about your kids personalities while changing their diapers! The drool, poop, food, puke, snot, & blood will be a constant presence for the next 10 years so trying to avoid it is pointless. I'm a neat freak, but you have to embrace the mess, and not diving into parenting 100% will not be healthy for you or your familiy's happiness.
good luck!
I try to keep my hands clean, though I change the majority of the diapers. I still throw up a bit in my mouth each time though - the main reason I realized early on that I could never hack medical school. Bodily excretions just aren't my thing.
We didn't go too crazy(we were financially a little nervous) but we went to darn near every game in Crisler last year...and we only saw them lose once.
If you seek out advice from other parents, avoid or take with a large grain of salt any advice you get from parents who have one child. They tend to extrapolate their experience to all children. Seek out the advice of parents of multiple children. They know full well that there is no single method, product, approach that works.
And as others have said, you don't really know the meaning of "being busy" until you have a child.
My daughter will be in first grade and my son in kindergarten this year, so we're easing out of the whole initial phase of this child-rearing.
If I had to choose one thing, it would be this - I really wish someone had mentioned to me that I would find myself saying things that I would never think I would say and that there would be moments throughout the day that I would catch myself saying strange things.
If you had told me ten years ago that just this morning, I would have to try and talk my daughter out of making circles around her eyes with markers, or that moments later, I would find myself telling my son that a recliner is not a good springboard and that jumping off it onto a hard floor will not end well. I would have laughed. I am not laughing right now.
I also wish someone had told me that my kids would be - at this age - more competent with the computer than I am, because every time I leave MGoBlog up to go and take care of the old "that didn't sound good" problem in another room, I find that one kid has typed some analysis of a recruit / current player / other issue and is seconds from pressing "Save". Actually, it's a little uneasing - we sat my daughter in front of this StudyIsland curriculum that the school provides for summer use, and without prompting, she's got the interface nailed.
In all seriousness though, my dad did tell me that parenting would be the best job I was never prepared for, and he was absolutely right. I love it, but I was not prepared for it and I find something out about it every day.
What I wish people would have told me? That you don't know what love is until you have your own kid. I wish they told me how much joy this kid would bring into my life... pride, happiness, wonder. It seems like everyone loves to share their doom and gloom advice about how your life will be over... and it's a big change and big adjustment for sure, but it is so f*cking worth it. I used to be a guy who said that I didn't care if I never had kids... holy crap, I can't imagine life without kids now. There's no better way to pass *it* on.
A couple of positive pieces of advice for those thinking of having kids... get big travel and projects done. We took our dream trip to India and remodeled the kitchen (to the studs) before actively trying to have kids and are very glad we did because those would have been nearly impossible now. Also, think about investing in a nice camera... pictures pictures pictures.
I was going to list the "25 free photos" you get with each email address at CVS.com.
Everyone has an email address now. Both kids. The dogs. Dead pets I had growing up. CVS doesn't seem to care =)
Getting major projects done before baby time is key. Don't try to get them done during the pregnancy. We finished our basement and ended up falling a few weeks behind. Our daughter was a few weeks early and we literally had to spend the first few nights out of the hospital in a hotel room. We have stained concrete floors and the poly finish made it a bad idea for a newborn to be around. We had to finish some details after the baby was born. Power tools and napping newborns do not mix!
I'd tell ya to not write novels on mgoblog and go do the things you listed.
But seriously, watching TV and typing are surprisingly accessible activities whilst bouncing a baby/reinserting a pacifier/talking nonsense to your baby.
This is how i felt when my daughter heckled the rest of my family to the point they were actually getting pissed at her after the 2010 nd game. she was 6 then and it was awesome
I wish someone would have told me things don't get easier, the stuff you deal with just changes. I thought after potty training and normal sleep cycle things would get easier but they don't. The challenges are just different. Talking leads to a whole new set of complications. Growing up drama can be a pain. I have to remind myself that the petty stuff that really doesn't make a difference in the long run is the most important thing to them at the time.
Still, having kids is the best thing I ever did. My advice is to learn how to just talk to them about anything in order to stay connected. As hard as it is, turn off the computer, ipad, iphone, etc. and just talk. I asked Brian to dedicate HTTV to my kids and write something along the lines of from the guy who owns the website your Dad is on all of the time.
Until you have kids, you've only experienced about 5% of all emotions that exist. You will never feel adequately rested again (once they start sleeping, then worry will keep you awake at night). There are times when you really don't want to be with them but conversely, you can't imagine life without them. You will magically come up with things to worry about, like your kid might slip through the slats of the staircase at your workplace, even though he never even goes to your workplace. You will love your kids in a way that feels evolutionary - it's the deepest feeling you can imagine. Your kids' bodily functions will not gross you out (exception: see guy in this thread who doesn't like diaper changing). And you would unflinchingly take a bullet for your kid.
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What Wendyk5 said.
In addition to the emotions like love, joy, worry that Wendyk5 mentioned, also be prepared for heartache when your kid gets rejected or hurt in some way. Just like the joy and love can be intensified, so can the pain when your child is hurting and you wish you could just take all the pain away, but you know you can't, and even if you could, doing so would curtail your child's independence and growth.
I wish someone had told me that two full decades of your life will be ruined. Just obliterated. There are some good points, obviously, but I honestly don't think a rational person would choose to have kids if they knew all of what was in store.
I guess in the end it's the kind of experience most people want to have, but there's pretty good research to show that although people with kids say they are happy they had them, they are actually unhappier than statistically equivalent people without kids. Fortunately, your happiness returns when the kids are out of the house.
Um, also, don't sweat the small stuff and live every day like it's your last and talk to the seven people you meet in heaven and have some chicken soup for the soul.
there's pretty good research to show that although people with kids say they are happy they had them, they are actually unhappier than statistically equivalent people without kids.I'm wary of research into "happiness." That's dependent entirely on the subjects being truthful in their responses, and it's anyone's guess if they are.
Experienced pollsters and researcher know that many people are less than truthful when describing their personal habits and state of mind. Ask 100 people to verbally describe how much they eat, what they eat, how much alcohol they drink, how much exercise they get, and how many cigarettes or joints they smoke, and you'll have a substantial number of them wildly off the mark.
From http://www.fitnessmagazine.com/weight-loss/expert-advice/diet-detective…
"When talking to people who are trying to lose weight, I often come across the "dieter's paradox": They "hardly eat anything," but they still don't lose weight. This seems to be one of our biggest problems -- we never believe we're eating anything.
It's been reported in the New England Journal of Medicine that people attempting to lose weight tend to underestimate the amount they eat by as much as 47 percent and to overestimate their physical activity by as much as 51 percent. When scientists at the USDA's Beltsville Human Nutrition Research Center in Maryland asked 98 men and women to state how much they ate in a 24-hour period, they found that 6 out of 7 women underreported by an average of 621 calories, and 6 out of 10 men underreported by an average of 581 calories. When the American Cancer Institute did a study asking Americans to determine the portion sizes of eight specific foods, only 1 percent got them all right. Sixty-one percent couldn't get more than four correct."
In my opinion, such drastic inaccuracy of the personal estimates isn't solely due to people's inability to count calories. It's also due to the very human failing of lying to oneself and to the outside world.
But this would only matter if there is a systematic bias in one direction or another. If everyone elevates their happiness a little, then the gap between the child-having and childless would still exist. If some people inflate their happiness and others deflate it, then the errors would cancel out. But there is a significant, robust gap between the two groups, and it disappears among empty nesters.
I don't think this is something that can be easily quantified. There is no way of knowing how truthful people might be. It could be that childless adults, who have dealt with social pressure to conform to the norm and have kids, might feel defensive about their "well-being" and more inclined to respond affirmatively. I've never met a childless middle-aged person who actually admitted regret over not having kids - that's not something you'd normally say. The "correct" thing to do in that situation is put on a happy face.
Besides all that, there's a degree of apples/oranges here. What level of "happiness" do you experience when your child takes his/her first step, learns to read, etc.? Does that compare to some kind of happiness you felt when you had no kids? Your life takes on a very different dimension when you become a caregiver.
Don't you think professional social scientists have thought of this? I mean, despite the bum rap they get it's not like they're just throwing shit against a wall and reporting on the results.
Can you cite a study that proves this?
I think it's a matter of perspective or preparedness... there is no doubt that once you have kids, the vast majority of your next 18+ years will be spent doing things with and for them. This means that you will have to sacrifice many of the things that you like and want to do. If you define your happiness by only things that *you* want and *you* like rather than finding fulfillment and happiness in providing for others and rasing kids that will be your legacy, then having kids may not be an especially positive experience.
Personally, I have never been happier... sure, there were times when I thought I was happy, but having kids made me realize there's more. I've also never been so tired, frustrated, sometimes angry... as one early writer said, you'll experience more emotions (and I would add stronger emotions) than you've ever felt. Be patient... with your kids and yourself. But don't tell me that I'm not as happy as I think I am based on some study... that's kind of insulting.
You state that no one should tell you how happy you are with the decision to have children based on the results in some study (stupid statistical analysis), that to do so is insulting...and then insinuate that those of us who (at least presently) find the idea of having children/essentially donating a portion of your soul to another human being to be at least slightly horrifying are incapable of understanding some grand emotion that's only privy to the enlightened ones such as yourself with children. Who is being insulting, honestly?
Pardon me for sticking a pin in your baseless hypothesis, but I can in fact attest that I have a fairly decent conception of what love is (having had, you know, parents, siblings, a partner, etc.); I didn't need to give birth to someone to come to this understanding. There is nothing wrong with having children or those that do- just as there's nothing wrong with the opposing side of the coin. Unfortunately, your comments, whether you intended them that way or not, suggest that you don't believe that to be the case, and that those on my side of the ledger are somehow inadequate. Which is moronic to the nth degree.
To answer the OP to an extent, I wish I would have been told how condescending a lot of newly-minted parents become once they join the ranks of literally BILLIONS of people who've already had children. You didn't cure cancer or invent a longer-lasting lightbulb, get over yourself.
Rant over.
Wow, that wasn't my intent at all, and clearly hit some kind of nerve. I think one of the points that I was trying to make is that what you get from having kids is going to be very individual to who you are. If you interpret that as some kind of elitist judgement of your choices and perspective, that's your interpretation, but I certainly didn't intend to insult, offend, or be "moronic to the nth degree" (speaking of insults).
The OP asked what we wished people had told us before we had kids. If someone were speaking to me, they would address me as "you." Hence my reply to the OP's question using the pronoun "you." I did not intend to imply that everyone would have this experience, and in fact am quite aware that it may be very individual to me. This is why the entire remainder of that post is in the first person.... because it only applies to me. My apologies if you felt insulted by the description of my experience which I could have worded more clearly... I suppose I could have put quotes around the "You don't know love..." sentence.
I have "parents, siblings, a partner, etc." too. You have no idea what the love of your own child is like and therefore can not relate. Maybe you should realize this and get over YOURself.
Feel free to get me ranting more, moron.
It seems like any discussion about having children inevitably devolves into ridiculous posturing about which group’s happiness is real or somehow better, as if denigrating the lifestyle choices of others somehow validates your own world view. This debate is pretty silly, honestly. Lots of people are unhappy in life irrespective of whether they have children or not, and it should be possible for people to have preferences on this sort of thing without others making moral judgments on the value of their life/ correctness of their decisions. (This was not directed at you, but rather at everyone making silly extrapolations about strangers based on their reproductive decisions)
Yeah, I wish I had known that before I replied here. Geesh.
Tell me how you REALLY feel...
Wasn't that the point of the OP?
...I will add this. As a point of reference, I'm in my mid 30s not married and with no kids. I have been to over 60 weddings in my life (several became divorces), many of which have kids as a result. Generally speaking, in my experience, I would say people (men and women) were less happy when they got married compared to being single, and became more happy when they had kids compared to being single. I always found that interesting. What's more, I sense that the kids bring a deeper more evolutionary connection to the parents than the parents have towards each other. Because of this, the happiness is rooted in your kids, not necessarily your spouse. What are people's thoughts on this?
So what does this mean? Make time for your spouse in all the chaos of having children.
The kids are yours, you can't take them back... your spouse, well, that depends...
The problem I see in a lot of marraiges is that the parents become combative about who does what around the house and whose responsibility it is to take care of the kids, clean the gutters, or put down the toliet seat, etc.
The successful marraiges I see either have A.) no children or B.) two parents whose main concern is the children. Now that doesn't mean you don't have your nights out, because you have to have your time to yourselves to keep that relationship healthy, but it does mean that the majority of the successful relationships I have observed involve couples that enjoy playing with their kids more than going to a bar or some other 'adult' entertainment...
take that as my advice.
13+ years later we still crack up over it, his candor and attitude. What a thing to tell an expectant Dad. We don't agree with his assessment. Yet. Teen years are just starting. No regrets yet though!
Whoever tagged this as trolling, please come back after you have raised kids through injuries, illnesses, bouts of depression and sucide, and then tell me I'm trolling.
How do you only have 939 points? I feel like I've seen you on here forever.
I lose points like a motherfucker.