Parenthood is full of new responsibilities. Some of them are obvious — like trying to keep your kid in “like new,” condition, despite their unwavering attempts to undo your efforts. Others may surprise you. How do you prepare for life as a new parent?
In this article, we take a look at some of the responsibilities all new parents will need to address.
Driver
Your car will never be the same once you have kids. Car seats, diaper bags, nursery rhymes loaded up on Spotify. Cheerios spilled and never completely picked up. Blankets in the back seat in case they get cold and, well, you get the picture. You’re the driver, but the car isn’t yours anymore. Not really.
Storytime Expert
Reading to your child even when they seem like they are too young to appreciate it is an important component of helping them learn language and develop early literacy skills and cognitive processing. Most experts recommend at least five minutes of reading a day — or one thousand books by Kindergarten to foster development.
Which sounds like a lot, but we’re not exactly talking about Moby Dick here. The books are short, and some of them are pretty good, so find your library card and get going.
Professional Worrier
Pretty soon you will be worrying more than you ever knew possible. If your partner is currently pregnant, you may actually have already experienced this phase of fatherhood. There is always something new to concern yourself with, and it only gets worse once they are born.
Expect more than a few nights to pass fretting over your coughing child, wondering if a fever of 100 degrees is enough of a reason to go to the emergency room. It isn’t, but you’ll probably wind up there anyway.
Google Fanatic
No one tells you this when your significant other becomes with child, but there will come a day when you spend a staggering amount of time online Googling something like “Toddler swallowed whole ketchup packet,” or even more likely, “What is the number for poison control.”
Part of it is that children really are terrible custodians of their own health. And then there is the “worrying,” gene that seems to come with your child free of charge the moment you bring them home from the hospital. You should almost be grateful for it, actually, because it’s the only thing from the hospital that won’t cost you an arm and a leg.
Fierce Advocate
Kids can’t really advocate for themselves. Partly because the world doesn’t necessarily take children very seriously. Not in an actionable sort of way, at any rate. It’s very easy for a child’s feelings to get disregarded or ignored within the thrum of a busy day.
As a parent, your job is to be their advocate, even when it’s tough. Most of the time, this will happen in small, though very uncomfortable ways. Maybe your aunt likes to kiss the kid right on the lips, even though they’ve said over and over again that they don’t like that. Guess whose job it is to enforce the “no means no,” rule at family gatherings?
Bottom line? When your kid doesn’t have the words or the voice required to express their needs, your job is to be their microphone.
Kiss 10 PM Goodbye
This is less a responsibility and more an inevitability. You’ve probably heard the phrase “you sleep when they sleep,” right? Ha. What a joke. You want the truth? They never sleep. Not in the adult way. Not through the night.
Here’s what sleep in fatherhood actually looks like. The baby goes to bed. You and your partner settle in to watch a show. What’s Grogu up to these days? You’ll never find out because you’re both asleep when the opening credits begin. Forty minutes later, you wake up to a baby crying. You look up at the TV, and then end credits are rolling.
Before you know it, 10 PM will be a distant memory.
Learn to Say No
It’s tougher than you might think to tell your child no. They’ll make mistakes, sure. They’ll drive you crazy even, but where do you draw the line? When do you decide if their behavior is insubordination that needs to be punished or just typical tantrumming?
Every parent handles discipline differently, but the truth is that consequences aren’t about giving your child a punishment. They are about teaching them how to behave. It is your responsibility as a parent to ingrain those lessons in your child as thoroughly and effectively as possible.
Forgive Yourself
Parents put a lot of pressure on themselves. Here’s the thing. You’re going to make mistakes. In fact, at least once a day, there will probably be something you wish you did differently. Maybe you lost your temper. Maybe you didn’t take the time to appreciate your child the way you know you should.
Learn from your mistakes, and move on.
Just Be There
So much of a parent’s job is to continue making an effort every single day. No parent will be perfect, but as long as you try, and try hard, and try hard, you’ll be giving your child a true and special gift that they will appreciate for the rest of their lives. It’s not always easy, but it is your biggest and most important responsibility.
Self-Care
A serious one. Self-care is important when you are a new parent. We’ve approached some of these points with a humorous tone up until now but—
Humor? Is that what you call it?
But the truth is that parenthood is at once an enormous gift and a tremendous burden. You will spend almost every waking hour of your day doing things for someone who never says thank you. Whose poop you will come into direct contact with more times than you ever would have imagined possible.
Eventually, your tank is going to run dry. When it does, it’s important to fuel up. That could mean doing something you love. It could also just mean arranging so that you can catch up on your sleep for a night or two.
Self-care matters all the time, but particularly when you are responsible for caring for others. You won’t do anyone any good if you are burnt out.
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This content is made possible by Andrew Deen.
Photo credit: istock