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It DOES Get Easier: A Message to Mothers of (Very) Young Children
by Susie Cortright
One foggy, fuzzy day when I had three kids under the age of five, I
happened to be sitting on a park bench near a group of very put-together
moms. (Foggy and fuzzy didn't describe the weather – just my mental
status that year.) These moms were chit-chatting as their school age
children played nearby. I was nursing my six-month old while my two-year
old tried to bounce on my knee. My four-year-old was braiding and
twisting my hair to keep herself occupied. I looked up at this group of
moms, and I said, "Tell me it gets easier." They shook their heads.
"No," they agreed, "It doesn't get any easier. It just gets…different."
I've heard this many times: The notion that parenting doesn't ever get
any easier – it just changes. And one thing is true: The questions my
kids ask now are harder to answer. The problems my kids have now are
harder to solve. But I think that we say parenting doesn’t get easier
because we want to emphasize that parenting never becomes less important
– and that is most certainly true. Good parenting at age 14 is no less
important than good parenting at age 1 or age 4 or age 22. But the fact
is: Day-to-day life DOES get easier.
My kids are each out of diapers and sleeping through the night. Two of
them are in school full time and one enjoys preschool a couple days a
week. Yet, their time in infancy is still so fresh in my mind that I
haven't forgotten waking up every two hours to feed the baby, having to
work in the middle of the night because I couldn't cram enough in during
the day, the sheer physical exhaustion that came with being pregnant
while chasing toddlers. And the restlessness that came with the feeling
that I was losing touch with the person that I was even amid the bliss
of new motherhood.
I don't have teenagers yet, so in a few years, I may have to amend this
message, but I feel compelled to whisper this fact to every bleary-eyed
mom with a double stroller. It DOES get easier.
At some point, you will begin to sleep – ALL night long. Maybe not every
night, but you will come off chronic sleep deprivation. You will feel
less moody and less tired and more like the woman you remember being.
And that will make everything you do seem infinitely easier.
At some point, your kids will begin to buckle their own seatbelts, tie
their own shoes, and brush their own teeth. It will be a treat to take
them out to dinner, and vacations will be time for relaxing, not just
more work for you. At some point, your kids will ask for what they want
using complete sentences, and they will, on some level, understand a
rational explanation of why it is or is not in their best interest to
want such a thing.
At some point, your clothes will look roughly the same at the end of the
day as they did at the beginning. At some point, you will actually go
for days -- weeks, even -- without having anything to do with your
child's poop.
At some point, you will regain your professional identity, though it's
sure to be a new and more mature variety. At some point, you will have
time to volunteer for causes that are important to you. At some point,
you will be able to read an entire book before its due date at the
library. At some point, when you clean your house in the morning, it
will be clean all the way until the kids get off the school bus in the
afternoon. At some point - and this is really strange - but at some
point, you will come into your home and it will be quiet.
And when this happens, you will have some remarkable little people (who
are a lot like you) to chat with and to laugh with and to share your
life with. You will also – and I can say this with certainty – miss all
of those things that are making your life not so very easy right now.
I suppose I feel compelled to say all of this because when we can see a
light at the end of the tunnel, it makes it easier to settle into our
days and to enjoy them, just the way they are. Because life with kids
never gets any better than it does when they are small. It doesn't get
any less exciting or any less fulfilling. And it certainly doesn't get
any less important. It just gets…different. May you find light in every
single age and every single stage.
Copyright Susie Michelle Cortright
Editor, Momscape.com
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