It gets harder

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One weekend before my second son was born, my wife and I took our first son to a pretty lakeside town a couple hours away. It was summer. We spent the weekend. It was great. One day we go to a local brewery. It overlooks a winery. It’s a sensational view. We got a pint and walked up to the mezzanine balcony facing the vineyard. We were waiting on food, enjoying our beers, and our oldest—then two-ish—was crawling around, exploring, on the table, on the seats, etc. People did the usual cooing and oh isn’t that cute stuff. A woman at a table next to us leans over and says something nice, comments on how sweet he is, recounts a memory about her kids, etc. We smile. And even though by this point we were fully immersed in a barely alive existence of stress, brutal sleep, enormous fatigue, and car rides from hell, it was still a beautiful moment.

And then. There’s always an “And then”.

A woman who’d been sitting at table a bit further away gets up to leave. Her husband/partner walks on in front of her but she slows and turns to approach us. She had on a hard-to-read expression. A mix of smile and smirk. We expected another compliment. Cute baby. That’s so sweet. I remember those days. My kid is blah blah blah. When she arrived she leans in a bit and says two short sentences.

“Enjoy it. It gets harder.”

I laughed. Loudly. It was ballsy, obnoxious, and brutally honest all at once. As she slowly pulled away I said, “You’re the first (and only) person to actually tell us that. Thanks for being honest.“ It was the type of thing—to this day—that no one else, before or after, has said to us. Then, as fast as she approached, she left. Just a quick dump and leave. Not even a goodbye. Just a French exit as they say. No offence to the French. Or the Irish. Or the Polish. They all apparently do it too. I like a good quiet exit.

If you get into talking with parents of older kids and teens, I’m sure they’ll jump into their numerous issues. My neighbour has a sixteen year old. They’re Polish and aren’t known for their effusive or lengthy conversation. But when the Dad sees me with either of my kids, he throws me a “Just wait until they’re teenagers (followed by head shake)” quip. It doesn’t last long or get into any more detail. Just hangs there as an omen. It’s delivered with a laugh. But the tone is unmistakably dire. Not like “Just wait..haha, it’s so fun and funny”. It’s like, “Just wait, fuuuuuuuck”.

Warnings aside, by the time they’re that old, so much of the really difficult stuff is done and gone. No one might choke and die on a piece of lego or a string bean. No one might fall down the stairs. No one might just slip as they’re running wildly in the kitchen and slam their faces into the fridge or open dishwasher. No one might suffocate in their sleep. Dangerous fevers and other sicknesses are rare (given basic health and vaccinations). Older kids can feed themselves. Dress themselves. Wash themselves. Sure, teenagers and university age kids can get into a whole different level of trouble. But by then they don’t need your constant supervision for basic life. While I take nothing away from what I’m sure is a laundry list of difficulties with older kids, most parents I think would agree that nothing surpasses the difficulty of the infant and toddler years.

Which brings us to “It gets better”.

This phrase is among the top 5 worst things to say to a new parent. Or any parent. Or anyone. At all. Ever. Stop yourself if you feel it coming on. Like when, you know, you might be in a particularly good mood and you just read your positive affirmation for the day and feel like it’s working and you want to pass on some of that inspiration. Or if your kid is having a good week or so, and things are looking up (classic rookie mistake). Or if you encounter some new parents and feel like now you’re old hand and have something to pass on, like, a real golden nugget of wisdom type thing. Just wait a tic and take a breath. And then don’t.

“It gets better” is THE favourite axiom of everyone from parents to grandparents to non-parents to people with nieces and nephews or “friends with kids” who don’t actually know jack shit about the reality of parenting but think they do because they hear all about it from their brothers and sisters and friends and feel by osmosis or proximity, they really understand. “Trust me I know, my friend’s kid has this terrible rash…” (hand placed softly on shoulder in shared sympathy).

Even Grandparents think because they’ve done it they know everything. And that their experience is still valid and applicable. They love to toss around the “Oh, I’ve done it before you know. I know a thing or two about it” nugget. Complete with side-head-tilt and knowing head-nod. It doesn’t really land that their experience lies firmly in the no-seatbelts, smoking in the car with windows up, whisky on the gums, spanking, beating, yelling, go to your room-ing epoch of parenting. Or that parents forget absolutely everything anyway! Between fatigue, stress, and also fatigue, your grey matter just disintegrates. All remaining available brain power reverts to basic human function just to keep the lungs and heart going. When infants turn to toddlers you forget what infant life was like. When toddlers turn to grade-schoolers you forget what toddler life was like. My sister, bless her, who was (and is) an extremely engaged and active parent, whose kids are now almost 19 and 16, does not remember anything about the age my kids are at. Seriously. She’ll make assumptions and suggest plans and ask questions that a single bachelor in his mid twenties would ask. How!? And then I remember. The fatigue. The stress. The grey matter.

In 4 years of parenting I’ve heard “It gets better” more times than I’d like. But the real issue is having people say this at you, straight faced, with tilted head and scrunchy, faux empathetic face, when you’re in legit, deep, unending times of utter destruction, fatigue, screaming-induced sleeplessness and pure exhaustion. And I’m not just talking like a night or two of bad sleep. I’m talking a year of bad sleep. A year of not wanting to go in the car. Ever. No joke. 2 years of waking up in the morning to whining or crying or screaming or coughing. Having PTSD from sickness where the sound of a cough triggers mental and emotional collapse. This is when having someone on the sidewalk (or anywhere)—someone who’s rested, showered, dressed in clothes that don’t have food or spit stains on them, someone who’s kid (singular) is older or easier or already an adult or who has a nanny—tell you “It gets easier”. Un huh. Sorry, what’s your name again? And you have how many kids? And they’re easy are they? Oh and they’re 15 and 18? And they like the car do they? And they don’t get sick often? Good for you.

“It gets better” is the furthest thing from helpful. It’s not empathetic. It’s not shared experience. It doesn’t do anything about the immediate pain. Or the near-term pain. Or the longer-term pain. It’s pity. It’s trite. It’s not factual. It’s advice from a person who does not currently know what you are experiencing. And it’s advice that doesn’t in fact change anything or impart any useful information. It’d be better if they said “I know it’s brutal. I had a total shit time. For a long time. It didn’t get better. For a long time. It was awful. For a long time. And then, slowly, things changed. They got less brutal. Not quickly. In small increments. That gradually built up.”

That is useful.

Because I can now say this same thing. I hesitate, as per Mason’s rules, to celebrate, declare success, have hope, high five or otherwise tempt the Gods of fate and irony. But with both of my kids now in daycare, things have changed. More on that later.

Have you tried [insert great advice here]?

The second instalment in our ongoing series of hollow, pithy, no-meaning trite-isms is the classic, “Have you tried…”? More than the others, this one might be the actual worst. Whether it’s from parents, non-parents, old parents, uncles, aunts, cousins, friends, acquaintances, friends-of-acquaintances, or randos on the sidewalk, it never fails to make my head slump forward and eyes roll back into my head. Giving Have you tried suggestions to parents is like asking someone who gets chronic migraines if they’ve tried Advil. Or cut out red wine. I’ve heard chocolate can be a trigger? Have you tried cutting that from your diet? Have you tried is like a veiled accusation. You mustn’t have tried everything. If it’s happening, then you’re doing something to make it happen, right? So let’s talk, together, and you know, figure this thing out. Let me deign on you to offer some suggestions that I read on the internet or that my sister who gets migraines said works for her. It’s worth a try, right (scrunched up empathy face with compassionate side-head-tilt)?

Parents who experience difficulty with their children (cough, which is everyone, despite what the internet tries to tell you), do their due diligence. If it’s one thing parents know how to do, it’s research. Nothing inspires action so much as sleep loss. Or constant sickness. Or Machiavellian temper tantrums. If a parent is telling someone about a problem or even moderate annoyance regarding their kids, it means they’ve already spent countless hours scouring the depths of the parent blogs and psychology websites to find answers. Which is precisely the moment said interloper pounces and offers their hard-won, battle-tested advice. “I put spinach in the blender, then add it to our pastas. That way they get some greens, LOL (letters said out loud)”. Oh ya? What happens if your kids eats pasta, but NEVER at dinner time? What if they only like pesto sauce? What if spinach just still tastes like shit, you know, as it does normally, even after being blended so surreptitiously? And your kids still don’t want it?

Huh. I never thought of that. Well, have you tried purees? My kids LOVED purees.

For some reason Have you tried seems to get more entrenched the further away from parenting you get. Like as your kids age, your memory fades, and your grey matter contracts, for some reason the Have you tried part of the brain expands. It becomes more active. It’s less inhibited. More apt to pop out at the first opportunity. Grandparents love Have you tried. “I used to just leave you in your room whether you wanted a nap or not. I needed the break. Have you tried that?” But it also gets amplified in aunts and uncles and friends who have friends who have kids. “Oh, ya, totally, I know what you mean. Have you tried ignoring? My friend Bailey’s son does that and she ignores him and it stops pretty much right away.” Right.

Like the others on our list, it’s best to check yourself before allowing a self-righteous Have you tried session to go off the rails.

It goes so fast

And then there’s “It goes so fast”, and the beloved “I remember those days”. The latter is a fave I’ve heard quite a lot from older parents. We get it from locals who see us walking with our youngest strapped into the carrier. One time I had a woman start half-yelling and gesticulating wildly at me from across the street. It was winter and I was walking with my 1 year old in the carrier inside my coat. Just his cute little head was popping out. This woman, through the magic of pantomime, was able to impart that she apparently missed those days, and had done the same in-the-coat trick with her kid or kids or whatever. I could barely hear her over the gusting wind and the too-far-to-actually-be-talking distance, but it was weird regardless. She’d started talking before either of us were really close enough to engage, especially as stranger-walkers. But I nodded and smiled nonetheless. “Un hunh (nod, thumbs up)”. Nice! Byeee!

The hardest part about the “It goes so fast” thing isn’t that it’s trite or annoying or belittling or disregarding of the actual day to day difficulty of parenting young kids. It’s that it’s true. It does actually go fast. You don’t notice it. And it sure as hell doesn’t feel like it. Nothing goes fast in the first years. It ALL goes slow. Every shift of the day, wake-up/early morning, late morning, lunch, naps, post naps, early evening, dinner, bedtime. It’s all of it, nuts. It’s long. It’s arduous. It’s doesn’t go fast. And you don’t wish it will slow down. The problem is you don’t actually notice that it’s going fast. Because it’s going so goddamn slow. And it’s so goddamn painful. And you’re running on so little goddamn sleep. The sleeplessness is another reason it goes so fast. You can’t remember anything. You’re so tired at the end of a day all you want to do is sleep. And stringing day after day of that together merges all days into a sort of single, uber pan-day. It’s one day but it’s all days. And then suddenly your kids are 4 and 1.5. One just graduated daycare and starts school in the fall. The other is totally rocking daycare and is growing like a weed.

So, there’s two things. Life with little kids doesn’t get easier. It doesn’t get better. It gets harder. And as the Law of Unintended Consequences states, every action has an unequal and totally unpredictable set of reactions. Most of which suck. So as opposed to things getting better, they usually just get different.

So, I guess, sorry to all the people who told me it goes so fast and I said fuck you, that’s super unhelpful and a waste of unsolicited advice breath, give me something I can actually use, dummy.

My bad.