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Parenting Doesn’t Get Easier, Just Different
If you were sold the lie that it gets easier as your kids get older, let me give you the truth for free
My sons are 20 and 17 these days. I’ve been a single mom for my younger son’s entire life and the majority of my older son’s. Their father came to see them very sporadically for about eight months to a year after our divorce, then he split, never to be seen again. I’m pretty sure he’s still alive only because I get occasional child support payments on the tens of thousands in past due support he owes.
When they were little, we went through the usual parenting things: potty-training, getting them to sleep through the night, teaching them not to touch the stove or the grill or the other hot stuff, snatching hands to yank them back from running into the road, that panicked moment where they disappear from sight before you see them again.
You know, the things that, when they happen, other more experienced parents tell you, “Don’t worry. It’ll get easier as they get older.”
There were the tears of teething, nightmares, meals that weren’t wanted, naps that weren’t wanted, tantrums, homework that wasn’t clear and they didn’t want to do. There was the vomit, the diarrhea, the fevers.
