The early days of motherhood were a blur for me: sleep deprivation, sickness, generally feeling overwhelmed and out of my depth.
“Ah!” the wise older women would tell me, “You’ll look back on these days differently. You’ll exchange these difficulties for different, bigger challenges, and wish you could go back to the time when they were little and when everything could be solved by milk.”
I just want to say by way of encouragement for anyone at an earlier stage of parenting than we are, that this IS JUST NOT TRUE of my experiences so far.
It gets easier; it really does.
My heroine Hollie McNish obviously puts it better than I ever could, so why not just read her wonderful little poem and not bother with the rest of this blog:
Isn't she raw and marvellous? I love how she captures the joy of the simple moment with a child now a similar age to my eldest, and the whirlpool of emotions of the early days.
Anyway, here are just three of the reasons why, for me, parenting primary age children is simply a more enjoyable experience than parenting tiny ones, and why the tired new mums should be encouraged.
1) Parenting primary age children is relenting. (I’m surprised to find that is even a word).
Parenting small people was, in my experience, unrelenting. They seemed to need me at every hour of the day or night. I couldn’t take my eyes off them for a minute, couldn’t go to the loo without an audience; they were physically attached to me, in the sling, on one hip. I loved them dearly, loved their closeness, loved that I got to press pause on work to have that special time with them. But still. As the primary carer, on weekdays it sometimes felt like there was NO ESCAPE.
Primary age children are a completely different kettle of fish. For starters, we have outsourced them for five days a week, which is a pretty hefty amount of break from them. So hefty, that when I see my five year old’s little face emerge from the classroom at 3.25pm and he comes running out to tell me, “I missed you!” I say it back and really really mean it.
They are also much more independent. Whilst it was a privilege to be completely depended on for sustenance, toileting, clothing, etc., it is also jolly nice that they can take care of a lot of that for themselves now. Especially, let’s face it, the toileting. On a weekday morning, I can lie in bed going ‘Urrrrgh!’ whilst they get themselves up, washed, dressed, breakfasted, and then clear up and play the piano, which is a lot more relaxing than the days of getting up with a baby who has an internal alarm set to 4.30/5am, and pacing the streets with a buggy until 6.30am, when it was safe to return to the house and risk waking up the others. My primary function in the morning is now to drive them to school, as they have not yet mastered that skill, but to be fair if we’d remained living where we used to, I possibly could have ducked out of that role even.
And sleep. Sleep is good. We didn’t really get an unbroken night for nearly seven years, but now it’s rare for someone to be up in the night. I love it. When I go to bed, I still frequently think, “I don’t have to get out of bed for several hours.” Bliss.
More on poo here (because for some weird reason, everyone loves the poo blog) https://sarahhadfi.wixsite.com/website/post/on-being-the-poo-queen
2) Primary age children are generally more robust.
Ok, so I know we’re in a pandemic, and that there are plenty of sick and chronically ill children of all ages, but older children seem to be healthier children. My experience of little people is that they are pretty much permanently ill, with colds and vomiting bugs and hand, foot, and mouth and chicken pox and conjunctivitis, and just about anything else going. SO MANY BODILY FLUIDS. But now, not so much. We hardly have any medical appointments anymore.
Health is a marvellous thing not to be taken for granted. Heathier children are generally happier children and also generally have happier parents.
Here's my take on bodily fluids: https://sarahhadfi.wixsite.com/website/post/on-the-yuckiness-of-little-children and hospital appointments: https://sarahhadfi.wixsite.com/website/post/on-hospitals-and-storm-troopers
3) Primary age children are great company.
Sindhu Vee does a great comedy sketch in which she claims that there is zero value added for her in conversation with her toddler, because literally everything he says she knows already. Now, I might not go so far as that (I found my boys to be extremely entertaining conversationalists, even when they said the same things eleventy billion times, including the youngest who went through months of pointing to random objects and saying ‘apple’ but which was still somehow hilarious for us all). But they definitely have more varied and interesting topics to discuss now. They teach me stuff all the time, from things they pick up at school and stuff they’ve read and watched, including plenty I don’t particularly want to know, like about Minecraft. Sometimes, when we read the Bible together in the evening, they might make a comment, and I’m like, “Oh, yeah!” and suddenly I’m a peer and not a teacher, and I love that.
The other day, we were cycling to church and I said to my eldest, “You’re all good at cycling and reading now, so I reckon my work is pretty much done.” And whilst I was mostly joking, it’s true that they can now make sense of the world and transport themselves places, so I’m somehow less crucial, and could totally justify sending them off to work in mines or something (obviously kidding there).
So to my well-meaning, older mum friends, who told me I’d swap infant challenges for older child challenges, and want to switch back, I say a big fat, “No.” This is easier. I’d tell my new-mum, sleep-deprived former self, and anyone around to listen, “Hang on in there - things will get easier.” And maybe also tell them they’re doing a sterling job and take their children for a bit so they can have a nap. And yes, I know there are some mums who love the newborn stage and their children sleep, and bully for them, isn’t it great that we all have different strengths as a parent, but I don’t think there’s any denying that new parenthood is a very demanding stage of life. I think I would have totally lost the plot without my husband and the team we had around us, and I look at all my single-parent friends with genuine awe and wonder, like, "You're amazing! How on earth are you doing it?"
So, in short, I reckon I’m at a fairly optimal place in parenting. I’m surrounded by boys who are still young enough to cuddle me (well, two of them at least) and to look up to me more than I deserve, but old enough to function by themselves. I know the dark days of the teenage years are ahead (we work with teenagers; we’ve seen it) but I feel pretty optimistic because I think they are pretty lovely human beings on trajectories to turn out ok. If I could pop back in a time machine to visit the adorable little people they used to be, I’d jump at the chance of nipping back to feed a snuggly baby and have him fall asleep on me, or giggle with a cute toddler, but I wouldn’t want to stay there forever. No, I am very content with the appealing stage we and they are at, and what I think are probably THE BEST DAYS right now.
Although I think being a granny looks pretty amazing too, so there's that to look forward to.
And to go right back to the beginning, here I am on birth stories: https://sarahhadfi.wixsite.com/website/post/on-birth-stories
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