I have kids and I agree to an extent, but also believe the inverse as well. I can see that my life has led to me maturing sufficiently to care for kids. I have

I have kids and I agree to an extent, but also believe the inverse as well. I can see that my life has led to me maturing sufficiently to care for kids. I have the experiences, self awareness, instinctual impetus, and so on required in order to keep my kids alive (so far). And yet I have arguments with my wife that make no sense. We disagree about things, and although we like to believe we're relatively competent, reasonable, well-meaning people, we are sometimes the opposite. We're not as much unlike our kids as social norms want to imply we should be. We grow through these things as well, it gets better, we learn some lessons, but these mishaps continue to occur. We forget to start dinner early enough, the kids get to sleep a bit late. I forget to charge my watch, miss its alarm, and wake late so the morning is rushed. All these little mistakes, and all you'd generally expect from a child (and possibly even reprimand them for). At times my status as "mature adult" seems tenuous. I might tell my kids not to eat to many Christmas treats, then find myself eating several as I do the dishes. Whoops? I have to be careful that I don't convince myself I'm all that different from them, frankly. Yeah I've managed to keep things going so far (with the help of my wife), but some days it is a bit of a marvel that it all works. Not to be too self-deprecating, and I am joking slightly. I'm also increasingly aware that the state of being anything at all—what it's like to be me—is eerily similar to how it felt decades ago. I have more resources to draw upon, which is very useful, but the mode of being hasn't shifted much in longer than I can remember (literally). I can only imagine that my kids are the same. The way they exist, how they feel moment to moment, the way they perceive the world, is not at all unlike it was for me and still is today. I'm also constantly impressed with how intelligent my kids are, from early on. It isn't that they're super kids or anything. Given the right opportunities and resources though, kids are smart. They get stuff. They're constantly crunching through information and synthesizing things and making sense of the world. They're incapable of some decision-making and reasoning, without a doubt, but they deserve a lot of credit. Perhaps the bottom line is: don't take being an adult too seriously. We aren't entirely different from our kids. We are still the kids we were, too. Just hardened by a bit of experience, shaped by countless mistakes, and well-rehearsed in making stuff up as we go. If the kids are happy and healthy, all is well.