Parent Terror
The worst baby stress has something good – I promise!
In extreme cases, a crying baby can feel like sheer torture.
Babies and toddlers can quickly become backbreaking work that pushes you to the limit. Yet there is a core to this stress that should be appreciated.
We're here to ourselves, so let's be honest: Babies and toddlers are often hell! And I don't mean the cute "hihi, the pacifier plopped down again" problems that people without children imagine. No, having a child can be a real pain at times! In Guantanamo Bay inmates were tortured because they could not sleep for ages and were exposed to loud and aggressive music. Parents in their first baby year who have not slept for months but have enjoyed nerve-racking screams of colic nod sympathetically at the descriptions. Or cry spontaneously.
Discover the hidden happiness.
The good thing is: Even in the toughest of times there is a bittersweet insight that needs to be discovered. For me personally, that moment came when my youngest child finally understood how a toilet works. And then I realized: at some point I had changed the last diaper of my life. An epochal milestone, and it had rushed past me very secretly. I hate changing diapers (we all do, right?) And couldn't wait for it to end. And now that the great moment had passed silently? Not the bonfire that I had imagined, but a touch of sadness. Diapers are disgusting, they are annoying and they are also outrageously expensive. But if they are missing it is also a clear signal: The baby that you had for years is now gone for good! The toddler it replaced is great and incomparable, sure. But you'll never hold the baby in your arms again.
1000 secret farewells every day
This is the downside of child stress: If everything goes right, the children need you less and less and at some point they no longer need you at all. And that's a damn good thing! And yet: a toddler who claps his food on the floor screaming is pure terror. At the same time, this terror stands for a development phase in which on the same day it giggles for minutes at the window, because it has discovered a bird outside. The terror comes to an end at some point, but with it also many things that you only miss afterwards. Every day we say goodbye to 1000 little things without even realizing it: The last time the child snuggles up in the parents' bed. The last book that you read in the evening. The last time your child spontaneously falls around your neck just because they want to.
It's not all bad!
And before that comes off wrong: This is expressly not meant as a conservative appeal to all mothers that they shouldn't get in line and rather enjoy their fulfillment in the happiness of their mother! No, we agreed: everyday life with babies and children often sucks for parents. But when everyday life brings you to the brink of the abyss (and parenting abysses are deep!), It can at least be a little comforting to have the positive downside in view. We have exactly this child, with all its peculiarities, only this once in life, at this moment – and then never again. And if we don't consciously enjoy it – why do we even do all this stuff?