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Does parenting get harder as children get older?
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amother
Chocolate


 

Post Thu, Oct 04 2018, 6:24 am
Feeling overwhelmed by parenting. Do things get easier or harder as they get older?
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Chayalle




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Oct 04 2018, 6:25 am
They get different.
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Aylat




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Oct 04 2018, 6:28 am
How old are your children at the moment? I have ages 4-13. In many ways much easier than when they were all under 8 - if I run out of milk or bread I can just run out to get it or send an older child, instead of packing baby+toddler into the buggy and shleping everyone out. Everyone can dress themselves, feed themselves, shower themselves. The older ones have good basic cooking skills and often make eggs/pasta/pancakes for themselves and whoever is hungry. I can safely take a shower without worrying about the kids (though still not in peace - everyone seems to have something vital to tell me as soon as the door closes and the water goes on LOL). I can sleep in on Shabbat, go to shul, and take a nap in the afternoon.

On the other hand, no one ever seems to go to sleep, so no quiet kid-free evenings. My daughter has activities and bat mitzva parties that finish really late so I sometimes have to stay up late specially waiting for her to get home. As they start to enter teenage years I find I have to bite my tongue a lot and take a deep breath during dramatic mood swings. Issues are more complicated, school and social pressures are growing. Problems that we hoped would go away as the child grew have become more concerning and need greater interventions. Questions like: how much freedom to give? whether or not to shield or to expose children to different issues? balance of expectations and unconditional acceptance? - become more and more complicated.

Having said all that: some of my kids have issues that I am very stressed about, but I am so much less 'overwhelmed' by parenting than when everyone was younger.


Last edited by Aylat on Thu, Oct 04 2018, 6:47 am; edited 1 time in total
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Tzutzie




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Oct 04 2018, 6:40 am
Depends on the child.
It constantly changed.
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amother
Brunette


 

Post Thu, Oct 04 2018, 6:44 am
I think physically it gets easier but emotionally harder
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thunderstorm




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Oct 04 2018, 6:50 am
amother wrote:
I think physically it gets easier but emotionally harder

Was going to say exactly this, word for word.
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amother
Ecru


 

Post Thu, Oct 04 2018, 6:55 am
I think the best years of your life are when your kids are young. It’s physically taxing but it’s rewarding and so full of potential.
As the kids grow & marry parenting doesn’t stop. It changes. There’s less potential & definitely a sense of loss. Some dreams of yours for your child shattered and you must accept that very little is within your control (if you ever thought it was).
I often reminisce about those early days of parents a bunch of young kids where our biggest issues were sleeping & potty training.
Enjoy these magic years.
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ssspectacular




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Oct 04 2018, 7:17 am
It does get easier in many ways. Less waking in the night, running to drs, cleaning up messes. The children can help with many chores.
It is crucial to LISTEN and really UNDERSTAND your children as they get older. I find ages 8-11 are a critical period -the time to catch issues before they develop.
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amother
Pewter


 

Post Thu, Oct 04 2018, 7:19 am
Ecru said it perfectly.
Not everything is magically wonderful about parenting young kids. But there is magic in hope and potential.
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amother
Firebrick


 

Post Thu, Oct 04 2018, 7:25 am
For easy good kids it gets better and the nachas and pride grows.
For troubled and difficult kids it gets harder as the problems and issues get more serious and harder to deal with.
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ShishKabob




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Oct 04 2018, 8:19 am
I don't think it gets harder or easier. It's different for sure.
You need patience and proper guidance for all stages
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amother
White


 

Post Thu, Oct 04 2018, 8:25 am
amother wrote:
For easy good kids it gets better and the nachas and pride grows.
For troubled and difficult kids it gets harder as the problems and issues get more serious and harder to deal with.

It depends on the challenge. With some problems it was a relief to that the outcome wasn't so bad (the kid with autism did learn to talk in the end, the kid with a learning disability did learn to read...).
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crust




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Oct 04 2018, 8:32 am
Tzutzie wrote:
Depends on the child.
It constantly changed.


This

And then it changed again when you thought you knew thy child already.
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amother
Tangerine


 

Post Thu, Oct 04 2018, 9:45 am
I find it gets harder in the sense that the problems that come up are more complicated and you need to deal with bigger issues, but not being sleep deprived anymore makes it easier. The simple problems of little kids are so much harder because you're living in a sleep deprived haze. Now that I've been sleeping again (for now. I'm not done with babies iyh), I can handle anything, even things that are objectively more difficult.

Also, in general, I relate better to older kids. That's just how I am. So while it may be objectively harder to deal with the kid whining "but everyone else's mother let..." than it is with a toddler laying on the floor screaming because you gave him his milk in the wrong cup, the former does not make me crazy because I can communicate with that child using words and we can use both our brains to problem solve, whereas I can't do that with the toddler yet and the limited communication puts me on edge.
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Fox




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Oct 04 2018, 9:54 am
I'm like Tangerine. I'm charmed by newborns for a couple of months, but then give me moody pre-teens over toddlers or even young school-age kids any day.

Parenting is a job, and like any job, there are good days and bad. Years ago, one of my friends sputtered on the phone to me, "Sometimes I just get sick of looking at their stupid little faces." She loved her children dearly and was a great parent . . . but, yeah, sometimes you feel like that.

Just try to muddle through, take as many breaks as you can, and remind yourself that the days are long but the years are short.
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amother
Burlywood


 

Post Thu, Oct 04 2018, 10:15 am
amother wrote:
I think the best years of your life are when your kids are young. It’s physically taxing but it’s rewarding and so full of potential.
As the kids grow & marry parenting doesn’t stop. It changes. There’s less potential & definitely a sense of loss. Some dreams of yours for your child shattered and you must accept that very little is within your control (if you ever thought it was).
I often reminisce about those early days of parents a bunch of young kids where our biggest issues were sleeping & potty training.
Enjoy these magic years.


Amother ecru I read what you wrote and I had to check the date and time to make sure it wasn't me who wrote that.
Your "enjoy these magic years" put a little lump in my throat. So true, I was thinking.
I just know though that mothers groping bleary eyed through carpools with spit up adorning their shoulders snorted derisively when they heard their days described as "magic" and promptly hugged your post.
I'd have liked to give you ten likes to balance it out, but Yael doesn't allow that.
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ora_43




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Oct 04 2018, 11:54 am
I agree with Aylat.

In general, I think that as your kids get older they need less total help from adults, but of what they do need, more needs to come from you. A teenager has a lot fewer needs than a baby, but OTOH what they do need can't be outsourced. That's one caveat to the "it gets easier" approach.

But I do think it gets a lot less overwhelming minute to minute.

For me it's also easier as kids learn more, are more able to communicate, and have more grown-up interests. Spending time with them becomes less draining. As much as I enjoyed my kids when they were younger, I've never come back from taking small kids to the playground and thought "ahh, that was just the break I needed. Now I have energy to get things done."

Time spent with older kids can be fun in a non-draining kind of way. Not always; sometimes it's shrieking and fighting over whose dress is whose and who messed up the room and... etc. But sometimes I go for a walk with a kid and talk about life, or help one of my kids read one of the books I loved as a kid, or take an older kid shopping, and it genuinely feels like taking a break to do something fun.
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ora_43




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Oct 04 2018, 11:56 am
Also, there's the relationship of parenting (ie how the parent and child feel about each other) and the work of being a parent (laundry, scraped knees, supervising, more laundry, helping with homework, taking kids to therapies and activities and friends' houses, laundry...)

If I had to sum it up in a sentence, I'd say that the relationship gets more complicated (but not necessarily worse), and the work gets easier.
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grace413




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Oct 04 2018, 11:59 am
Little kids, little problems.
Big kids, big problems.
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ora_43




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Oct 04 2018, 12:14 pm
grace413 wrote:
Little kids, little problems.
Big kids, big problems.

But less frequent problems.

Little kids have little problems 100x a day.

Big kids, everything is fine for four months and then they crash the car.
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