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Blogging is great, it allows me to interact with other likeminded parents and share ideas and opinions and bounce about thoughts. Reading blogs by others on parenting is always eye opening too, and some of the stuff can be really deep, which is great to read.
But sometimes amongst the whole world of blogging the basics of parenting and the reality of parenting can be lost in a sea of edited Instagram pictures and reviews of products. Now don’t get me wrong, these things aren’t wrong and I am just a little bit guilty of this too! But sometimes it is good to strip it back to the basics and the honesty about it all.
What do I mean?
Well quite simply put, what is parenting really like? As I said, a lot of what is online is positive and that’s what draws people in, but I hope with this post is that I want to make people feel they can relate to me when I say PARENTING CAN BE HELL.
No Lie.
The other night for example, I had spent 3 hours trying to get my son to sleep, he refused and just kept crying and screaming and I couldn’t work out what was wrong! I was getting frustrated because he was keeping Sofia awake and she couldn’t settle for all of the screaming. In the end I had to get his mummy up to settle him and give him cuddles. I just couldn’t get him to settle.
Misbehaving children in a restaurant or supermarket.
Dealing with tantrums
Children that fight
The terrible 2s
Trying to get your kids to eat the right food
Nappy Changes
Sheer Exhaustion both physically and mentally
These are some examples.
Now this doesn’t last forever as we all know, but sometimes you can just feel overwhelmed by it all. As most of you will know we have 3 under the age of three and most of the time things are great and we can manage this quite well, but for me, when the three of them all have meltdowns at the same time I can sometimes feel so overwhelmed and don’t know what to do, and I find myself just looking at Clare.
Because being a parent is a priority, your relationship with your partner can take a hit! You find that being a parent becomes so absorbing that your patience can be stretched and without knowing it, you may snap at the other person over the stupidest thing. Then date nights, we struggle to have a date night because its not always easy to get a baby sitter and trying to get people to look after our 3 kids isn’t easy, but you deal with it together and enjoy the little time you do get together.
As I said above, it was 10pm at least when my kids finally settled the other night, and by that time I was exhausted, and Clare wanted to watch her tv show, so that meant that quality time for us to recharge was gone and this can happen.
But for all of the hellish times that you can endure as a parent, remember that this is only a phase and it will pass, and they grow up so fast that this will all be forgotten about. But what Clare and I always say to each other is that we are a team in all of this, and we are not doing it alone. But for those of you that are single parents for whatever reason, then keep up the good work!
I just wanted to give whomever reads this in a similar circumstance or whatever the case may be, the real view, it can be easy to be caught up in the lovely nicey nicey side of parenting here on the internet but let me assure you that it can be difficult and you can find it hard, but that doesn’t make you a bad parent for thinking or feeling like that, we all do!
There is no guide to parenting, no self help book, or parenting for dummies, that can ever prepare you for being a parent, its part of life and something you learn as you go along as every child is different and takes a different parenting approach, trial and error of how to handle the situations with your kids. So don’t look at the “perfect parents” and think you are doing something wrong because you aren’t!
Keep doing what you are doing!