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Having Kids

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Re: Having Kids

#871

Post by raducu »

spyckie2 wrote: post #665
gsaines wrote: post #663

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have two very young kids (19 and 7 months) and my experience is somewhere between OP and PG. Most of the time, kids feel to me like an endless, grinding to do list. The sleeplessness, sickness, and endless chores/cleaning are hard to power through. My career has definitely slowed down and I find that I already struggle with lower levels of professional ambition. That's not the worst part though: the worst part is t…

> It's a way to become more human, and I'm getting what I came for. I appreciate this self introspection. Humanity is a vast mysterious realm to explore and we've spent most of our lives focusing only on the concrete systems, like productivity loops or economics.

Although Briggs Myers archetypes are seen as pseudoscience, I've found that I totally relate to the postulation that archetypes need to develop their less used functions later in life in order to become more complete human beings, and I've found that is totally the case for myself, an INTJ with having my daughter.

Re: Having Kids

#872

Post by raducu »

citizenkeen wrote: post #511
triangleman wrote: post #131

Hey guys. Anyone else have the experience of having kids, getting a burst of energy, but of course all that energy goes directly back into the kids and house, and you have absolutely no life for 3-5 years or more? Because my kids are 2 and 4 and so far it's been 4 years of no life, no freelance clients, almost no learning/hobbies, just 35-40 hours a week of working as much as I can at the office and then everything i…

My wife did research for grad school related to this, so we went in to this eyes open. Her studies showed that people who have a kid 3 or younger were less happy than equally situated peers. Their first smile is nice, but it's a lot of poop and your peers are going to Europe. If your youngest is 4 or older, there's literally no difference in happiness. Europe is nice. Their first play, them as actual human beings - a…

Knowing what you're getting into and having the rest of your life in order are golden, I guess.

I resent my wife for sort of slowly forcing it on me with promises of "nothing will change, my mother will help", I also resent myself for falling for it, but I wouldn't trade my daughter for anything in the world.

I've come to terms with the duality of being a parent, loving your children and raising them sucking at the same time, something I see non-parents completely unable to understand.

Great moments of being a parent, like 10% of the time, and sucking for the rest of 90% of the time.

Whenever I tell this to non-parents, they take it like "what, then what's the hype of being a parent, you must be broken somehow" or "there, that's another reason for me not to have children" -- both of which are far, far of from any conclusion I would take.

Re: Having Kids

#873

Post by raducu »

Cougher wrote: post #761
aklemm wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ages 1-4 were absolutely brutal for me. I'd do it again, but I'd go in giving up any pretense that I was going to maintain anything like a life. I was an at-home parent for those years, and really struggled having no escape from it. I maintained a pretense that I was keeping up on my field and doing various other things, and I did put in a good deal time on that, but it was not well-spent. I should've given up that i…

Good comment and yes, all-in parenting is a big deal. In fact, careers are obviously important because they're needed to survive and provide, but how we raise our children and prepare them for life is, in many ways, far more important than whatever tasks we may be performing at work. "Warning: I hear the teenage years can be just as daunting at the toddler/preschool years, but for different reasons." This was not my…

I'm in no position to offer advice, but I feel that in many ways having children in your twenties would be much better society wise -- if people had some psychotherapy to solve their issues and discover who they are and better relate to their spouse and if society was geared towards this, sort of like how the israelies have their military stage.

I know society is absolutely not geared to people having children in their twenties and having children is a big compromise between education, knowing yourself and what you want in life, finance, fertility and what's left of your life after you have children.

Re: Having Kids

#874

Post by raducu »

Aeolun wrote: post #551
sershe wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the reasons I'm never having kids is seeing just this pattern. For everyone I can recall right now, it lasts forever. They have more time later but the drive is gone. I've actually seen a few of people with a shared hobby and a toddler be like "kids won't stop me from doing X, in fact it's going to be better with kids to teach/inspire/...!", and then they disappear forever (up to 5 years so far). Or (skiing ex…

From my experience, this is absolutely true. I figured children wouldn’t interfere with my hobbies because I’d still have evenings and the weekend to do stuff. Turns out that during the week you are generally too exhausted, and in the weekend you always have to figure out where to leave your child if you won’t want to saddle your partner with them. You could bring your kids, but people without children (rightly so) q…

And then there are some people who actually seem to have time for all of that, which kind of makes it sad for the rest -- I remember a female coleague -- drop dead gorgeous, two kids, 28 years of age, always taking her kids for activities, full of energy at work, sometimes I wondered if she was on stimulants, which she couldn't be, because they are not legal in my country.

Re: Having Kids

#875

Post by raducu »

sbrother wrote: post #449
wetmore wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guessing by your name that you are a climber. How did having kids affect that part of your life? I am a pretty devoted climber at the moment, to the point that I left my job to pursue it more. Eventually I want kids though. Obviously I know that will affect how much time I can spend climbing but I'm curious to what degree it affects most climbing parents.

Not OP, but my wife and I were pretty avid climbers before having kids (we have a 2 year old now). To be brutally honest, I haven't climbed since he was born with the exception of a few gym sessions where we got a babysitter. I've gotten deep into biking and skiing, which at least where I live are things you can do over a long lunch break. If you live or work near a climbing gym then I imagine that's similar, but the…

I'm an absolute begginer in climbing, only did gym climbing, going only once a week meant almost no progress(going twice was much better) and I just loved climbing and how I felt after; I even loved the slow progress, I was like "whoaaah, I'll be entertained for years just with this gym", I've seen much younger climbers getting discouraged by their peers much faster progress(never mind those peers put much more training time), I'll be just happy to climb the same gym for the rest of my life; clymbing is one of those things I suck about, yet love, I love the gear, the almost empty gym on a friday evening, failing a route for a month and nailing it after, I love just how great some routes are that are just a biit out of my comfort zonr; my only regret is I didn't give it a chance when I was younger.

Anyway, I hope my daughter will love it too in a couple of years since she loves climbing on everything so we can take clymbing lessons in parallel.

Re: Having Kids

#876

Post by edpichler »

codingdave wrote: post #210
triangleman wrote: post #131

Hey guys. Anyone else have the experience of having kids, getting a burst of energy, but of course all that energy goes directly back into the kids and house, and you have absolutely no life for 3-5 years or more? Because my kids are 2 and 4 and so far it's been 4 years of no life, no freelance clients, almost no learning/hobbies, just 35-40 hours a week of working as much as I can at the office and then everything i…

It gets better - My kids range from 14 to 9.The 14 year old is hanging out with friends and making jewelry. The 12 year old is sitting in my bedroom, reading. The 9 year old is playing games. I'm coding on personal projects, and my wife is in the basement making blankets. We have an entire day of just all doing whatever we want. Weekdays are busier with school and work, but you the point is that you do get your time…

It's so good to read this!

Re: Having Kids

#877

Post by ido »

hellllllllooo wrote: post #624
kelnos wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would tend to think that, for people truly on the fence, it is much better to not have kids and later regret it, than to have kids and regret that . At least with the former, you can still have an otherwise full life, and you're the only one who bears the brunt of your regret. If you have kids and regret them, the kids are going to suffer for it, even if you do everything you can to hide that regret from them.

You can always adopt or foster children if you really regret it later. There are plenty of children that exist that need good homes without having to create more.

As someone who knows several people who wanted to adopt - it's not as easy as you might think (at least unless you are able to spend a lot of money adopting children from abroad).

Adopting older kids who come from problematic backgrounds has a significant probability of them having experienced some sort of trauma before they got to you. It's absolutely a great thing to do to take care of these kids but potentially very difficult as well.

This is why it's very difficult to get to adopt babies - they are the ones that everyone wants. Not saying this should make anyone not adopt just that it's not as easy as you seem to think - western countries actually don't have that many orphans & a lot of people who want to adopt them (which is of course a good thing!).

Re: Having Kids

#878

Post by usefulcat »

Cougher wrote: post #767
usefulcat wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever I feel overwhelmed by the amount of time needed by my kids, I remind myself that soon enough they'll be teenagers and won't want to have anything to do with me. We're now halfway to that point with our oldest and I can say that with that much hindsight this advice has been spot on so far. So yes they need lots of time now, but when they don't you'll miss it too.

"I remind myself that soon enough they'll be teenagers and won't want to have anything to do with me." Is this really what you want? Because it depends on the relationship that you establish with your children. I found it such a pleasure to have teenagers who enjoyed being with me. I've always been kind of shocked by the desire of parents to be rid of their kids.

I never said I wanted that; I don't. The point is that I'm not going to assume that in the future they're going to want to spend as much time with me as they do now.

Re: Having Kids

#879

Post by JSeymourATL »

nyczomg wrote: post #731
triangleman wrote: post #131

Hey guys. Anyone else have the experience of having kids, getting a burst of energy, but of course all that energy goes directly back into the kids and house, and you have absolutely no life for 3-5 years or more? Because my kids are 2 and 4 and so far it's been 4 years of no life, no freelance clients, almost no learning/hobbies, just 35-40 hours a week of working as much as I can at the office and then everything i…

As a father of 4 year old twins, all I can say is that you have described my life. We also bought a fixer upper when our kids were about 2 years old. I have nothing to contribute other than an upvote, and a plan to read through the comments in this thread. Life is hard. I feel beat down and depressed a lot. I would also love some words of wisdom. All I can contribute to this discuss is that I can relate. My kids (and…

Fellow father of twins, now 6.5 years old.

A block from our home, a neighbor couple had triplet boys, just a year behind us. One of little guys has special needs. Plus, an older singleton. They're our heroes.

Words of Wisdom: Manage your energy. The car is a great place to take a cat nap. Enjoy the simple pleasure of hanging out in your own backyard.

Re: Having Kids

#880

Post by jccalhoun »

arbitrarylimit wrote: post #481
jccalhoun wrote: post #78

I don't like kids. I don't want kids. I'm 46 and single and I don't want to date someone with kids. It drastically reduces my dating pool but I'm willing to live with that. There are enough people on earth as it is. I don't feel like I need to increase that number.

At least sometime in your 40s, people stop saying "Oh, you'll change your mind. You'll want kids."

Which is why I stated my age :)
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