I was sitting in a conference room the other day with co-workers waiting for a meeting to start. We were chatting about kids and life in general. One of my co-workers has a baby and she was telling us how he is still struggling sleeping through the night. We all commiserated that it’s so hard having a new baby and having to get up early and get into work. We were basically building her up, giving her a gold star for doing all that she is because it is incredibly challenging. I am well out of those days but I remember them well, so the struggle is not lost on me.
Then one of my colleagues piped in with something that just sort of irritated me.
“Oh, just wait till they’re teenagers and they keep you up because they forgot to do their homework or they’re out with friends late on a Saturday. You’ll never get any sleep.”
Her statement probably holds some truth, at least for her, so that’s fine. This is not about the struggles of being the parent of a teen. But here is why it irritated me; it feels like people often want to one-up others when it comes to parenting phases or challenges. I believe that sometimes parents of teenagers forget the constant wear and tear that comes with having a baby or toddler. It is relentless.
In this particular moment still waiting for our meeting to start, I could see the baby mom just give this sort of shrug to the comment that our other co-worker had made. It felt like there had been this one-sided one upping that made absolutely no sense to me.
No kidding, that same week something similar happened. A dad was talking about something cute his toddler daughter had done and we were all swooning over it as he showed us a picture of her. Someone chirped in saying something like, “Oh just wait until they’re teenagers and don’t let you take their pictures at all.”
Again, this holds truth. But my irritation with it remained.
Why did this person feel the need to make that moment about them and how their life is hard because they have teenagers?
Why are we feeling the need to tell other parents to wait because things might just get harder? It’s like when we hear people tell us to enjoy every moment while we are knee deep in managing a temper tantrum or haven’t slept in 5 days.
I recognize I might be completely off here. I might sound like a totally negative person.
In those moments, it absolutely could be that the person is trying to build a connection by sharing something about their current phase of parenthood. It could be they are just trying to build onto the conversation.
They could be saying through their words, “hey mom, you are not alone!” The intent could be nothing but great.
But it sure just seems like they are trying to one-up or prove that they know more.
I bet you I have been guilty of this myself.
I bet you I have chimed in with something rather unhelpful when a friend or co-worker is talking about something their child did or didn’t do. In those moments, I probably had good intent. I hope I did.
I know a lot more now than I did 13 years ago when I became a mom. But that is by trial and error, learning and growing right along with my kids in a lot of ways. When they hit a new stage, we also are hitting a new stage; just from the parent perspective rather than as the kid.
A new parent isn’t going to know what it’s like to have a teenager just like we didn’t know what it was like until that stage happened. It doesn’t mean we should scare a new mom about what is to come just because we might very well have some additional insight that she simply put has not experienced yet.
No stage of parenting that is a breeze. Probably not even when the kids are grown. The baby and toddler stage is that 24/7 all hands on deck work and as they get older that eases up greatly but then the problems are more complex. Instead of dealing with diaper blow-outs, temper tantrums and having to watch them constantly, we are dealing with friendship challenges, homework arguments, driving them to and from activities constantly; and actually, sometimes still temper tantrums. One is not easier, they are just different.
I hope that in those moments where I have chimed-in in a way that wasn’t necessarily helpful and could be perceived as me just wanting to have some attention, that the person on the receiving end was able to see that I did have good intentions. That I was hopefully just building a connection and not trying to minimize their current challenges.
I am all in on building community and using that community to our advantage. Whether it be for advice, for hands-on help, for empathy, a good laugh or a good cry; we need that to lean into it. I pray we can all be that person for someone else and that we make it a priority to have that support for ourselves. To build each other up and not look for opportunities to one-up because we happen to be in a different stage of parenting that naturally comes with more experience. I pray we can see the good intent in others and that everyone wants and needs connection; even if in moments their approach might seem questionable.
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