Parental Advice

Have you ever found that the best advice about being a parent comes from those who don’t have kids?

I have to admit; before Nikolas came along, I had no idea what parenthood was all about. When you have kids, you suddenly become part of a secret club. People who are in the club can try to explain to outsiders what it is like, but unless you get in, you really don’t know.

So for people who have no kids and no responsibilities beyond themselves to give advice on how to be a parent, well, I guess it would be like a cave man teaching a pilot how to fly a plane. It’s kind of funny.
Matt came home a few days ago and shared with me that his brother (who has no children) told him that having kids is easy, you just have to be organized and plan. When I heard this, I really did laugh out loud. Oh, I can’t wait for this guy to have kids of his own so he can eat his words!

One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is to let go of control and just go with the flow. No matter how much planning and organizing I do – and trust me, I’m a planner; I am the queen of lists– things rarely go the way I anticipate. And not that this is a bad thing...unless I let it get to me, which I used to when I was still adjusting to this whole parenthood thing, I’ve just learned to accept the situation and do what I need to do to keep going on my course.

Great example  of this was this morning. I was getting ready for work, Matt had gotten Nikolas up and dressed and given him a bottle, and he was off to play. I was in the kitchen, noticed that Nikolas was playing in the mud room. On a quick glance, I took note that he was not eating the dog food, so I wasn’t too concerned about what he was doing in there. A few minutes later, I go in to get my jacket on, and find Nikolas has been experimenting with stepping into the dog’s water dish in his socks, and his feet were soaked! Really, it was cute. However, I had to rush him upstairs for a quick sock change and get out the door. This isn’t something we could have planned for...it just happened, and we deal with it. But putting socks on a 14 month old takes some good wrestling technique, and a few extra minutes.

This doesn’t make parenting easy or hard. It just annoys me when people who don’t have kids think it’s easy and if only a little planning went into your life, it would be a piece of cake. And when comments are made that we’re late for events, I just smile to myself and think “your time is coming buddy”.