How to prepare to be a parent
If I was going to have a money maker blog post, this would be it.
I wish I could offer a secret piece of wisdom, a mind blowing parenting hack within this post- you know, something concrete that would catch the eye of a million people!
But to be honest, which is all I want to do here, I only have my perspective to offer. My experiences, my viewpoints, my opinions are what I can offer- and they are severely limited. So take what I say with a GIANT grain of salt and if it doesn’t align with you, let it slide off your back!
I thought I had totally prepared myself for parenthood when I had kids. I had babysat for well over a decade, read parenting books, had friends who had young kids…I knew what I was doing!
Spoiler alert, I very much DID NOT know what I was doing! What I had done was form a lot of opinions about parenting and I had given myself a false sense of authority because I babysat. Babysitting was a false scenario- yeah, it helped me get used to changing diapers and such, but it didn’t give me any idea of what actual parenting was like!
The stress, responsibility, intensity and emotion of real parenthood totally overwhelmed me. We asked ourselves, “Are we ready to have a baby?” when we really needed to ask, “Are we prepared to raise a human?”
So. These are the things I would go back and do if I was pregnant with my first child, to properly prepare myself to be a mom.
1. Ask lots of different parents what their priorities in parenthood are, especially those who treat their kids in the way I want to treat mine.
2. Think about what kind of person I want my kids to grow up to be- not in the way of career choices, but character. Do I want them to be brave? Empathetic? Kind? Hard working?
3. Work backwards and decide on a plan to instill those principles into my children. Settle on a top few priorities I will have in my parenting and plan to make parenting decisions based on those priorities.
4. Understand that I will mess up, a LOT.
5. Understand that it is ok to change my mind.
6. Let the stress of unimportant milestones- i.e., what age they potty train, how many veggies they eat a day, when they start sleeping through the night- completely go, along with the idea that my worth as a mother is dependent on them.
7. Purpose to not let comparison to steal my joy from the children I have. So what if little Muhkaelynne learned to read at 2? Or that Brianna’s kids wear cute neutral colored, organic cotton clothes? Good for them! If it doesn’t align with you or you can’t do those things, then don’t do it.
8. Purpose to love the kids I have, not the ones I THOUGHT I would have. I’ll be honest- this has been a huge struggle for me. My kids have personalities and struggles and strengths totally different than what I pictured. I have fought with them for a long time, trying to mold them into what I thought they should be. I wish I had decided to just love them for who they are and work with them where they are instead of forcing my own ideas onto them…I lost out on a lot of time with them because of it.
9. Lower my expectations of myself. By like, a LOT. My body will not be the same and it’s ok. My house will be messy most of the time and it’s ok. I will make mistakes and it’s just the way it is. My kids will do embarrassing things and it’s not the end of the world. My husband and I won’t always agree, and that’s normal.
10. Be prepared to never finish anything ever again. Ok, this one’s a little silly…but I wish I had prepared myself with the understanding that kids have lots of needs, questions and wants. I’ve been interrupted no less than 15 times while writing this post- and it’s not that my kids are bad, they’re just little and busy! For years, this kind of thing has made me angry and feel like I was a failure because my kids were too “needy”- and that’s just not the case. It’s just part of parenthood.
If you are preparing to be a parent, I sincerely hope this post is helpful to you. The most important thing you can do is just love your kids- you can never love them too much.
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