I know that often we non-parents tend to live in delusion. We might meet some children for a few minutes and think they are adorable all of the time! I will be the first to admit that we can be a little clueless sometimes, and I will apologize for all of the advice from a non-parent that you have ever gotten, because we seriously have no idea what we are talking about. I will say, though, that after an enlightening weekend, which in no way compares to your lifetime commitment, I have experienced enough to know that parents superheroes. And here is why.
The Truth
First, I acknowledge that our lives are very different and that yours is a thousand times harder. I mean, you’re keeping human beings alive, which is probably the biggest responsibility there is. Right now my biggest responsibility – if you can even call it that – is shopping for furniture and home décor to transform my new apartment into something livable, as well as beautiful and brilliant. Lately, I’ve become pretty obsessed with looking at all the gorgeous artwork and photography on this website and picturing it on my wall. I could spend hours looking at these types of sites and casually sip my coffee, while my sister-in-law fed and dressed three kids before 8am, cleaned up spills and crumbs, had to change at least one of them again because something was spilt, meanwhile her coffee got sadly cold.
The Terrifying Two Days
I came to this heroic revelation through one of the most enjoyable but most terrifying weekends of my life. Aside from a career woman decorating a new apartment, I am actually a very proud aunty. As such, I get to consider myself as not completely hopeless with kids. However, usually my time with my nieces consists of short burst of fun and then getting to give them back at the end of the day. A couple of weekends ago, though, we had other family visiting and I took that time off of work to be with them. This consisted of five kids under the age of six, and five adults all packed into a tiny apartment. Fun times.
What’s more, the visiting family have two boys who have no sisters and my nieces have no brothers, so neither of them understand the difference between how boys and girls tend to play. Not to be cliché, but the boys were overly rough and the girls were overly sensitive. I think it was a total of five minutes after our visitors arrived that someone stole a toy, someone was hit, and someone else was crying. Within a span of only one hour, every child ended up crying at least twice and there were about 60 time outs issued or some other form of gentle discipline.
Since it was craziness and crying inside the house, we decided to get out of the house the next day. Now six adults and six kids, we headed out for a nice day at what can only be called an amusement park. Not a massive theme park, but a place with free entry, bouncy castles, slides, elaborate playgrounds… sounds like fun right? It was madness! You spend the entire time counting to make sure everyone is still there, and panic when someone isn’t because they have decided to climb up the exceedingly large slide on their own without telling anyone. At the end of the day, both kids and adults alike were utterly exhausted. I thought it was a miracle that no one got hurt, no one got lost, no one got sun burnt, and everyone got fed.
I ended up going back to work feeling like I needed a vacation to recoup from my vacation, all the while wondering how parents do all of this on a daily basis! How do you manage to keep these little human beings alive, and on top of that, all happy, healthy and well developed? The only logical answer is that you are all in fact superheroes equipped with superpowers!
