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> small hurdles spike my anxiety, my anger flares at the slightest confrontation, I notice fewer jokes, fewer attempts on my part to make people laugh. My memor

> small hurdles spike my anxiety, my anger flares at the slightest confrontation, I notice fewer jokes, fewer attempts on my part to make people laugh. My memory goes to all hell too and I can’t seem to concentrate on prolonged amounts of anything. Books fall off my radar, I stop listening to music. My phone is in my hand at all times, scrolly-anxiety-inducing apps become impossible to avoid. This describes me perfectly. Unfortunately I can’t take a break because it’s entirely due to being the parent of young children.

Swinx43 4y ago
I think it is impossible to understand how much additional stress and anxiety being a parent of small children bring without being in that position. I refer to it as the best kept secret of parenthood. No one tells you this until you are in it.
- afandian 4y ago
  They do try. But it’s impossible to communicate and understand completely. It can only be experienced! Same goes for the upsides.
- Silverback_VII 4y ago
  >I think it is impossible to understand how much additional stress and anxiety being a parent of small children bring without being in that position. I have to disagree and I'm a father. I think it's exactly like in the book "the happiness advantage", some people will see the positive and use it as possibility to grow and to get more productive. On the other hand, People who focus on the negative and didn't learn to cope with stress will have problems in every high stress environment no matter the circumstances. no matter the crap life throws at them some people simply march forward and this is the mindset you need - and not a break, which will only get you right back where you were.
  - Tade0 4y ago
    Also a father, and I don't see it as a case of positives and negatives, rather how much energy you're putting into it. There are many methods of minimizing the effort you're putting in and you can make it relatively easy, but like with everything it's a tradeoff. Food is one major point. You can introduce a baby to solids early on and practice the BLW method, or you could just spoon feed them with ready-to-eat baby products - there's an order of magnitude difference in effort between those two approaches. One thing I learned from this experience is that it's beyond the capabilities of a normal human couple to apply all the fancy, high-effort parenting methods - you'd need at least two grandparents cover just the more popular ones.
    - rtlfe 4y ago
      Absolutely this. You need to make sure they're clean, fed, safe (physically and emotionally), and are able to play (learn). Beyond that, choosing to parent on hard mode just gives you more stress for no benefit.
      - Tade0 4y ago
        Looking back I see some benefit to doing extra - for example my toddler had no issue with weaning or adapting to daycare, which I heard is usually a problem. We didn't implement independent sleeping and getting rid of the pacifier though(so far). I believe that ultimately people usually try to do their best and there's no sense in beating yourself up about it or worse - someone else.
        rtlfe 4y ago
        Yeah for sure try stuff out. But if it turns out to be hard, be willing to stop without feeling bad about it.
  - ravishi 4y ago
    If you grow along with your kid everyone benefits. For me this is the greatest gift life has offered me.
  - ip26 4y ago
    Good luck “looking on the bright side” when you’ve had less than four hours sleep every night for the past week. Some kids are just angels and sleep like champs, others fight every inch of the way and wake up constantly. As a result, different parents come up with wildly different “truths of parenting”.
    - tharkun__ 4y ago
      This is true but also dependent on your "other circumstances". The US is decidedly a bad place to be a parent from what I can tell. Parental leave, even when graciously granted by the company is short and frowned upon nevertheless (generalizing here of course but this seems to be the overall majority of cases). Taking a few months of parental leave right at the beginning was such a big help. All of the above becomes so much easier when you simply do not have to worry about work. Baby is not sleeping from 2a.m. to 5a.m. every night? Or only sleeps when having body contact, such as sleeping on your chest? So what! Stay up, do some chores, play some computer games or watch a movie w/ baby on your chest (yes there's ways where you do not have to worry about baby falling off and you have both hands available, so you definitely can get lots of computer gaming done in that time ;)). Go to bed at 5a.m. knowing you don't have to get up to get to work and be expected to have a fresh mind. You just fall asleep, exhausted and wake up for lunch time and it's fine! It just totally takes the extra stress out of that time (of course you're still gonna be tired from having your sleep rhythms effed up and such and sometimes baby just doesn't want to sleep at all, no matter what you do etc.) and I believe that can make for better parenting overall. Back in the day some of that would've been taken care of by living w/ your parents or in-laws.
      - ip26 4y ago
        Go to bed at 5a.m. knowing you don't have to get up to get to work and be expected to have a fresh mind. You just fall asleep, exhausted and wake up for lunch time and it's fine! Baby wakes up at 6:30am like clockwork. Your move, parent. Not to be a stick in the mud. You’re of course right that having additional responsibilities further increases the stress & difficulty.
        4y ago
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - civilized 4y ago
    Some people have an easy time raising kids and some have a much harder time. There are a lot of reasons for this. Different kids, different parents, health issues. The stress of a genuinely difficult parenting situation doesn't just go away with some superficial pop psych like focusing on the positive. That's such an astonishing claim, it's like telling a drowning person to use positive thinking to solve their problems.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
mantas 4y ago
Even a couple hours of a quality break helps. Especially if it’s regular. Not just when things are already out of control. My wife and I will be forever grateful to my mom for providing few hours break weekly-ish.
CalRobert 4y ago
I wish I'd understood the degree to which small children destroy you. The amount of focus time you get falls by 90%+, you sleep horribly every night without fail, and you spend every quiet moment waiting for one of them to start screaming because they found some new and ingenious way to hurt themself. Maybe a lot of that was having a 1-3 and 3-5 year old wfh during covid, but I feel like I'm broken ever since.
- duncan-donuts 4y ago
  Nah my kids broke me before Covid. Covid just made it harder. Obviously ymmv but your kids breaking you happens without it without a pandemic.
  - geerlingguy 4y ago
    I think the big question is once broken, and the kids finally start not completely breaking you every week... can you rebuild with the pieces left :) We'll see! I have 10+ years to go before I'll find out for sure.
- thrwawyprnt001 4y ago
  Anecdotal comment inbound, but you sound like you could benefit from a bit of hope: it really should get better, and soon. I have kids similarly distanced in age, the years you mentioned were the hardest so far and by far, even without a pandemic in the mix. That said, after they both were above age ~7 and able exist with a small bit of independence, things became easier. Like, an order of magnitude easier on my subjective and invented scale. Sleep improved, activities became fun again... in fact, I'm a bit sad when I can't convince one or the other to join me to do even simple things like picking up groceries. Hang in there. Good luck.
  - CalRobert 4y ago
    Thanks. I'm not as miserable as I make it sounds but the life I had before is 100% gone and dead. I enjoy much of my days and adore my children but I do spend a lot of time realizing there's a lot of things I want to do that just won't happen. I also notice that every time a colleague talks about "working on something over the weekend" or learning more stuff after work I fall further behind professionally.
ar_lan 4y ago
My one year old is relatively easy compared to other kids. She’s generally not fussy unless teething, very happy and playful, can play by herself well (if necessary), etc. My wife was out of town for a week and I had to single parent… even an insanely “easy” baby is so exhausting. I have mad respect for single parents. I basically had to give up work during the day until she went down for naps and for the night - which meant my sleep was awful because I’d work at least until midnight each night just to catch up. Parenting is surprisingly hard (wouldn’t trade it for anything, though).
scruple 4y ago
Yeah, same, minus the phone bit. I absolutely hate the fucking thing. I keep it around because I need an app for communication with my twins preschool and it's undeniably a better point and shoot camera than most actual point and shoot cameras. We have 3 kids, 3 years and under. I'm honestly more regimented in my personal life today than I was when I was active duty military. Things in (all of) our lives fall apart if I fall behind or start to slip. So I've become a sort of machine. I honestly think it's just a coping mechanism to deal with the fact that I've had to abandon entire categories of my self identity. I have 2, maybe 3 hobbies today. I get between 30 and 60 minutes of actual free time a day, but I like / want to spend time with my wife. I can't find time to maintain any relationships outside of my immediate family. I can't even really be more than 30 minutes from the house at any given moment, because my wife is still in recovery from the birth of our last child. It's just very, very hard. We have little help, and most of the help we get is neither reliable nor consistent. My parents are visiting right now, from very far away, and this morning is the first real break that I have had in over a year. I stepped away 45 minutes ago and was able to get some much-needed cleaning done in the office. I plan to give my wife a break when her and our 1 year old wake up from their nap. That'll be the first time I've been able to do that on a weekend in longer than I can remember.
- Mulderns 4y ago
  As a father of 3 (oldest at 4.5), I feel you. I have said, half jokingly, that the army was best practice I've had for being in this stage of life.
bitsoda 4y ago
I don't really have anything to add except that I'm grateful you brought this up because reading your comment and its replies was a nice reminder that we're not alone. One day our young kids will grow up and be more independent, which is bittersweet, but 100% necessary if I'm to have any life. Hang in there, parents.

Swinx43 4y ago

I think it is impossible to understand how much additional stress and anxiety being a parent of small children bring without being in that position. I refer to it as the best kept secret of parenthood. No one tells you this until you are in it.

afandian 4y ago
They do try. But it’s impossible to communicate and understand completely. It can only be experienced! Same goes for the upsides.
Silverback_VII 4y ago
>I think it is impossible to understand how much additional stress and anxiety being a parent of small children bring without being in that position. I have to disagree and I'm a father. I think it's exactly like in the book "the happiness advantage", some people will see the positive and use it as possibility to grow and to get more productive. On the other hand, People who focus on the negative and didn't learn to cope with stress will have problems in every high stress environment no matter the circumstances. no matter the crap life throws at them some people simply march forward and this is the mindset you need - and not a break, which will only get you right back where you were.
- Tade0 4y ago
  Also a father, and I don't see it as a case of positives and negatives, rather how much energy you're putting into it. There are many methods of minimizing the effort you're putting in and you can make it relatively easy, but like with everything it's a tradeoff. Food is one major point. You can introduce a baby to solids early on and practice the BLW method, or you could just spoon feed them with ready-to-eat baby products - there's an order of magnitude difference in effort between those two approaches. One thing I learned from this experience is that it's beyond the capabilities of a normal human couple to apply all the fancy, high-effort parenting methods - you'd need at least two grandparents cover just the more popular ones.
  - rtlfe 4y ago
    Absolutely this. You need to make sure they're clean, fed, safe (physically and emotionally), and are able to play (learn). Beyond that, choosing to parent on hard mode just gives you more stress for no benefit.
    - Tade0 4y ago
      Looking back I see some benefit to doing extra - for example my toddler had no issue with weaning or adapting to daycare, which I heard is usually a problem. We didn't implement independent sleeping and getting rid of the pacifier though(so far). I believe that ultimately people usually try to do their best and there's no sense in beating yourself up about it or worse - someone else.
      - rtlfe 4y ago
        Yeah for sure try stuff out. But if it turns out to be hard, be willing to stop without feeling bad about it.
- ravishi 4y ago
  If you grow along with your kid everyone benefits. For me this is the greatest gift life has offered me.
- ip26 4y ago
  Good luck “looking on the bright side” when you’ve had less than four hours sleep every night for the past week. Some kids are just angels and sleep like champs, others fight every inch of the way and wake up constantly. As a result, different parents come up with wildly different “truths of parenting”.
  - tharkun__ 4y ago
    This is true but also dependent on your "other circumstances". The US is decidedly a bad place to be a parent from what I can tell. Parental leave, even when graciously granted by the company is short and frowned upon nevertheless (generalizing here of course but this seems to be the overall majority of cases). Taking a few months of parental leave right at the beginning was such a big help. All of the above becomes so much easier when you simply do not have to worry about work. Baby is not sleeping from 2a.m. to 5a.m. every night? Or only sleeps when having body contact, such as sleeping on your chest? So what! Stay up, do some chores, play some computer games or watch a movie w/ baby on your chest (yes there's ways where you do not have to worry about baby falling off and you have both hands available, so you definitely can get lots of computer gaming done in that time ;)). Go to bed at 5a.m. knowing you don't have to get up to get to work and be expected to have a fresh mind. You just fall asleep, exhausted and wake up for lunch time and it's fine! It just totally takes the extra stress out of that time (of course you're still gonna be tired from having your sleep rhythms effed up and such and sometimes baby just doesn't want to sleep at all, no matter what you do etc.) and I believe that can make for better parenting overall. Back in the day some of that would've been taken care of by living w/ your parents or in-laws.
    - ip26 4y ago
      Go to bed at 5a.m. knowing you don't have to get up to get to work and be expected to have a fresh mind. You just fall asleep, exhausted and wake up for lunch time and it's fine! Baby wakes up at 6:30am like clockwork. Your move, parent. Not to be a stick in the mud. You’re of course right that having additional responsibilities further increases the stress & difficulty.
      - 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- civilized 4y ago
  Some people have an easy time raising kids and some have a much harder time. There are a lot of reasons for this. Different kids, different parents, health issues. The stress of a genuinely difficult parenting situation doesn't just go away with some superficial pop psych like focusing on the positive. That's such an astonishing claim, it's like telling a drowning person to use positive thinking to solve their problems.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]

mantas 4y ago

Even a couple hours of a quality break helps. Especially if it’s regular. Not just when things are already out of control. My wife and I will be forever grateful to my mom for providing few hours break weekly-ish.

CalRobert 4y ago

I wish I'd understood the degree to which small children destroy you. The amount of focus time you get falls by 90%+, you sleep horribly every night without fail, and you spend every quiet moment waiting for one of them to start screaming because they found some new and ingenious way to hurt themself. Maybe a lot of that was having a 1-3 and 3-5 year old wfh during covid, but I feel like I'm broken ever since.

duncan-donuts 4y ago
Nah my kids broke me before Covid. Covid just made it harder. Obviously ymmv but your kids breaking you happens without it without a pandemic.
- geerlingguy 4y ago
  I think the big question is once broken, and the kids finally start not completely breaking you every week... can you rebuild with the pieces left :) We'll see! I have 10+ years to go before I'll find out for sure.
thrwawyprnt001 4y ago
Anecdotal comment inbound, but you sound like you could benefit from a bit of hope: it really should get better, and soon. I have kids similarly distanced in age, the years you mentioned were the hardest so far and by far, even without a pandemic in the mix. That said, after they both were above age ~7 and able exist with a small bit of independence, things became easier. Like, an order of magnitude easier on my subjective and invented scale. Sleep improved, activities became fun again... in fact, I'm a bit sad when I can't convince one or the other to join me to do even simple things like picking up groceries. Hang in there. Good luck.
- CalRobert 4y ago
  Thanks. I'm not as miserable as I make it sounds but the life I had before is 100% gone and dead. I enjoy much of my days and adore my children but I do spend a lot of time realizing there's a lot of things I want to do that just won't happen. I also notice that every time a colleague talks about "working on something over the weekend" or learning more stuff after work I fall further behind professionally.

ar_lan 4y ago

My one year old is relatively easy compared to other kids. She’s generally not fussy unless teething, very happy and playful, can play by herself well (if necessary), etc. My wife was out of town for a week and I had to single parent… even an insanely “easy” baby is so exhausting. I have mad respect for single parents. I basically had to give up work during the day until she went down for naps and for the night - which meant my sleep was awful because I’d work at least until midnight each night just to catch up. Parenting is surprisingly hard (wouldn’t trade it for anything, though).

scruple 4y ago

Yeah, same, minus the phone bit. I absolutely hate the fucking thing. I keep it around because I need an app for communication with my twins preschool and it's undeniably a better point and shoot camera than most actual point and shoot cameras. We have 3 kids, 3 years and under. I'm honestly more regimented in my personal life today than I was when I was active duty military. Things in (all of) our lives fall apart if I fall behind or start to slip. So I've become a sort of machine. I honestly think it's just a coping mechanism to deal with the fact that I've had to abandon entire categories of my self identity. I have 2, maybe 3 hobbies today. I get between 30 and 60 minutes of actual free time a day, but I like / want to spend time with my wife. I can't find time to maintain any relationships outside of my immediate family. I can't even really be more than 30 minutes from the house at any given moment, because my wife is still in recovery from the birth of our last child. It's just very, very hard. We have little help, and most of the help we get is neither reliable nor consistent. My parents are visiting right now, from very far away, and this morning is the first real break that I have had in over a year. I stepped away 45 minutes ago and was able to get some much-needed cleaning done in the office. I plan to give my wife a break when her and our 1 year old wake up from their nap. That'll be the first time I've been able to do that on a weekend in longer than I can remember.

Mulderns 4y ago
As a father of 3 (oldest at 4.5), I feel you. I have said, half jokingly, that the army was best practice I've had for being in this stage of life.

bitsoda 4y ago

I don't really have anything to add except that I'm grateful you brought this up because reading your comment and its replies was a nice reminder that we're not alone. One day our young kids will grow up and be more independent, which is bittersweet, but 100% necessary if I'm to have any life. Hang in there, parents.