These Are The Things We Wish We’d Known Before Having Kids

Before you have kids, you have this vision in your head of what it will be like. Maybe you picture tossing a football in the backyard, teaching them how to ride a bike or the way their eyes will light up on Christmas morning.

I imagined all of those things. What I did not foresee was what a prominent role ear infections and breathing treatments would play in my son’s early years. Or how hard it would be to live 3,200km away from family with a toddler who was sick all the time.

Reddit user u/take7pieces didn’t expect the total lack of bathroom privacy, the way you sometimes need to sing the same song eight times before bedtime or how they never lie nice and still for a diaper change when you really need them to lie still.

So u/take7pieces posed the question to the Reddit parenting community: What are the things no one told you before having kids? And the answers came rolling in:

• There is no “just run to the store quick.” (u/mama22monkees)

• Answering questions you thought you knew the answer to. What’s fire? Why do we have sky? Why are bricks harder than sticks? I didn’t realise how little I actually know about things until I had a kid old enough to ask me. (u/pizzaguzzler)

• When YOU get sick, no one gives a fuck and you just have to keep going. (u/BobLoblawsLawBlog201)

• How you can spend a whole day begging for it to be time to put the kids to bed…. and then 3 minutes after they are asleep you want to sneak in for a snuggle because you miss them. (u/sparkingrock)

• How being potty trained is so much more annoying than diapers. (u/Shrimpy_McWaddles)

• The random rules you invent on an almost daily basis. (u/Mairead_Idris_Pearl)

• The desire for them to hurry and grow up or get to a certain stage of life but also being sad that you will never see them as little as they are now. (u/blonder34)

• How relentless parenting is. Obviously I knew going in you never stop parenting them, but I did think once they are older, it would be easier and feel less 24/7. (u/whatever7131)

• That they will just have their own ideas when they grow up and not be as like you as you thought. Or they will seem to inherit your worst traits and that will drive you crazy because it’s annoying but you know where they got it. (u/TinyT74)

• How hard it is not to laugh when your kid is doing something bad… but hilarious. (u/MissDelaylah)

I’d also add that I wish I had known how forgiving kids are. That you actually don’t need to get it perfect the first time or every time. You can lose your temper and snap at them or totally screw up in any number of ways. If you apologise, they’ll be the first in line to forgive you.

Your turn! What is something no one told you before you had kids? Or what do you wish you had known?