I regret having kids

[Anonymous]

I am so sorry, OP. Hopefully your kids will eventually get easier.
Special needs was always my biggest fear and the reason why I never went for one more child, even though I wanted another. I just know that I am not cut out to raise a SN child.

[Anonymous]

Sorry for what you are going through OP.

But please remember that this is not necessarily about having kids. This is about the cruelty of illness and life. It happens to some people's spouses and changes their life in somewhat similar ways. There are spouses who become disabled due to accidents or illness and the other spouse struggles for life.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:Can I ask how it took until after number two was born (when the first one would have already been seven) for you to come to this realisation? Was it the stress of going from one to two kids?

OP. It’s complicated. The severity of #1s special needs came to light when I was already a few months pregnant with #2. And raising #1 just gets harder with as they get older. The hardships forced me to come to terms with truths that were not in my awareness. Also think I’m just becoming more introspective with age (I’m 48).

I get it — it’s complicated. My oldest has profound special needs, which we also didn’t have a sense of until #2 was about a year old. The reality is that my oldest has an incredibly limited quality of life. I’m not sure we did her any favors by bringing her into this world (note, we did not have an in utero diagnosis). I don’t want her to outlive me, because she requires 24/7 care and the likelihood of her being abused is incredibly high. Do I “regret” having her? Yes, in some sense, maybe I do. I also love her a lot.

We haven’t slept through the night in almost 14 years. I’m sure the level of sleep deprivation we have has taken 5-10 years off our own life expectancy. Am I exhausted from changing diapers, making sippy cups, etc endlessly — yep. Do I hate it? Sure, I do.

But that said, I think therapy might help you. My husband and I have just sort of chosen to live in happiness. We laugh, have fun, outsource a bunch of her care (which is realize isn’t possible for most) and just keep moving forward with as much positivity as possible. We don’t dwell on the miserable parts, but we joke around about them. We have done a few sessions of counseling together and then I’ve done some on my own. It helps.

You sound like my neighbors who seem to have an amazing marriage/life perspective with a child with profound special needs in need of lifelong care. My marriage is fine, but I’m truly not sure if it is strong enough to survive that sort of strain. Much smaller things create a lot of tension in our home.

Same poster. My husband and I joke that we are really, really good at the hard stuff, but the little things are where we annoy the crap out of each other pretty much every day. We definitely are not living some perfect life. I will say that (i) money for outsourcing helps and (ii) we are lucky that neither of us was prone to anxiety/depression. Those two things are what ultimately allow us to focus on the good of it all. But if you are the OP, I will say that therapy helps. My husband and I went together twice. We just weren’t being out best selves and our therapist helped us come up with some really basic solutions. In our case, I think extreme sleep deprivation was part of our problem. It is hard to be patient and kind when you are utterly exhausted.

So this sounds awful but I think parents of kids with special needs will understand. I think it’s far easier in terms of life acceptance and impact on happiness when your child is profoundly impacted or lightly impacted. But most of us are in the middle. If your kid is simply never going to be able to function you get to drop the rope on hope. You don’t have to constantly think about where they are now and if things will improve. You can accept. If they’re lightly impacted, you get to make minor adjustments. It’s the middle, where the outcome is so dependent on what interventions are happening, that is extra taxing in terms of hope and balancing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am so sorry, OP. Hopefully your kids will eventually get easier.
Special needs was always my biggest fear and the reason why I never went for one more child, even though I wanted another. I just know that I am not cut out to raise a SN child.

This is obnoxious and self aggrandizing. You don’t have a special needs child, you told OP, because you made better family planning decisions. That is 1) not how it works and 2) rude AF. You don’t have a SN child because you aren’t “cut out” to raise one. This is 1) not how it works and 2) dumb. Nobody, not even a professional who works with SN kids, not even the most patient person, is made for the job. You do what you have to when you opt to have children. You take it as it comes. Saying oh I could never do it is asinine. If your kid falls off the monkey bars tomorrow and gets aTBI, if you get in a gnarly car wreck tomorrow, and you have a disabled child, you will be doing it. Imperfectly, like all SN parents do, against their will like almost all SN parents do. They didn’t exactly select the hard option by not following your fool proof guide to not having SN children.

[Anonymous]

Not the PP, but re making it profound: I think the beauty and insights come from letting your child lead the way when possible. My 2.5yo comes up with interesting stories and is very creative when left to his own devices, stories I would not have thought of. I often see pressure on parents to hurry their kids from activity to activity, which often translates into telling them what to do with their free time and worst-case, trying to create their personalities. To me, that takes the magic out of watching them develop. While I’m not always happy to follow my kid’s lead when he wants to watch ants for half an hour or watch sea lions at the zoo for much longer, I’m overall happy with this approach.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am so sorry, OP. Hopefully your kids will eventually get easier.
Special needs was always my biggest fear and the reason why I never went for one more child, even though I wanted another. I just know that I am not cut out to raise a SN child.

This is obnoxious and self aggrandizing. You don’t have a special needs child, you told OP, because you made better family planning decisions. That is 1) not how it works and 2) rude AF. You don’t have a SN child because you aren’t “cut out” to raise one. This is 1) not how it works and 2) dumb. Nobody, not even a professional who works with SN kids, not even the most patient person, is made for the job. You do what you have to when you opt to have children. You take it as it comes. Saying oh I could never do it is asinine. If your kid falls off the monkey bars tomorrow and gets aTBI, if you get in a gnarly car wreck tomorrow, and you have a disabled child, you will be doing it. Imperfectly, like all SN parents do, against their will like almost all SN parents do. They didn’t exactly select the hard option by not following your fool proof guide to not having SN children.

+1

We are all temporarily abled and if lucky will be so until very close to death after a well lived life.

But the attitude is revealing and I think it’s part of the reason why people regret having kids. Our society teaches us that if we parent “right,” the kid will be successful. It’s just not that simple. Anything else is “just world” fallacy.

[Anonymous]

Maybe you would be unhappy anyway, with or without kids. Some people (myself included) are just prone to depression and being unhappy and this would happen no matter your life circumstances. Also, everyone’s life is complicated to some degree. People are complicated. I think to a certain extent you’re romanticizing the kids-free life. No doubt you have it harder than other parents since you do have a kid with special needs. But no one has it perfect and no one is happy with their life all the time (unless they’re insane or really dumb).

[Anonymous]

My DD is married and has a kid. I now worry not only about my DD but my grandkid and son-in-law too. I hope that people who help her or depend on her (ILs, babysitter, cleaner) remain in good health.

I provide gratis care for their family from M-F (1 meal and 6 hours of babysitting) so that they can have a less stressful life.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Maybe you would be unhappy anyway, with or without kids. Some people (myself included) are just prone to depression and being unhappy and this would happen no matter your life circumstances. Also, everyone’s life is complicated to some degree. People are complicated. I think to a certain extent you’re romanticizing the kids-free life. No doubt you have it harder than other parents since you do have a kid with special needs. But no one has it perfect and no one is happy with their life all the time (unless they’re insane or really dumb).

Do you have a special needs kid?

Have you ever heard of the saying that a woman is only as happy as her most unhappy kid. I think there is some truth to that for many women. A lot if us have our hopes and dreams tied in with our children/ motherhood.

I remember being unable to sleep before my child's allergies were diagnosed. The wirst day of my life was when i got a call from home saying my child was being rushed to the hospital becayse ahe drank milk and was lethargy. I have nver been so scared.

A child's illness tests a mother like very few things can.

[Anonymous]

In Italy school was 8-4 M-F or 8-1 M-sat.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Parenting in US is harder. In many parts of EU kids still roam free at young age and even in the city. They are also in the care of government most of their days. By the time they get home, they are exhausted and not much trouble.
My parent barely did any parenting in the 80s. They had no idea where we were. We just had to make it home at dark. I was still allowed to go out after showing my face and eating. We wore ourselves out, not organized sports or parents.

If this was really true, we all would have moved to Europe years ago.

You know school hours are much longer in the US right? Lots of Europe kids are home by noon and parents have more to deal with.

32.5 hrs/week in UK, just like US.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2022/mar/26/ministers-to-make-school-week-a-minimum-of-325-hours-in-england

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Because having kids is a profound experience equal to none, and people who don’t have it just aren’t the same.

Except you don’t mean ‘just aren’t the same,” you mean “are less than.”

And that is fundamentally untrue.

Childless or childfree people are among those who throughout history have made some of the biggest differences to humankind that benefit all, not just a few offspring. The notion that a childless or childfree life cannot be profound is patently ridiculous.

And if parenthood is so great, why is it that so many of my friends with children are constantly telling me how jealous they are of my childfree life?

[Anonymous]

Considering climate change, the drastic rise of white racism in the US, the population bomb, and now the existential threat of AI, how can anyone in good conscience bring another kid into the world now?

[Anonymous]

I get you OP, I hate being a mother- 14 boy and 16 year old girl.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Maybe you would be unhappy anyway, with or without kids. Some people (myself included) are just prone to depression and being unhappy and this would happen no matter your life circumstances. Also, everyone’s life is complicated to some degree. People are complicated. I think to a certain extent you’re romanticizing the kids-free life. No doubt you have it harder than other parents since you do have a kid with special needs. But no one has it perfect and no one is happy with their life all the time (unless they’re insane or really dumb).

I am a mildly depressed single and childless person and I both disagree and agree with this.

On the one hand, I think sometimes people who get married and have kids before they hit, say age 35, don’t get that being childless at forty is very different from being childless at twenty five or even thirty. When you are younger you have tons of peers who are also childless and you can feel normal and have lots of fun. Once you get older your kids start having kids and they are immersed in thwt life and many of your friends just totally drop you. It’s not that great.

But, when someone is depressed and childless, they don’t have to take care of anyone but themselves. They just have to drag themselves out of bed and to work and back and make sure they shower and eat. Adding kids into that mix could increase depression. It just adds more burdens to deal with.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Considering climate change, the drastic rise of white racism in the US, the population bomb, and now the existential threat of AI, how can anyone in good conscience bring another kid into the world now?

I don't know if this was intended to be serious, but the rise in autism diagnoses in the US has been incredible. Had I realized the odds, I would have known not to roll the dice.