s/o What from your pre-kid life best prepared you for being a parent?

[Anonymous]

Camp counselor for a very ritzy sleepaway camp + lots of babysitting, being a coach for various sports (child & adult) & research on development, psychology, etc.

Also, being a SAH wife and FT caretaking of adults and animals with difficult medical conditions. They can't always communicate and need a lot of care that requires close attention regardless of time of day, your stress or sleep levels, etc.

[Anonymous]

Cooking and cleaning efficiently have been useful. Otherwise nothing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I knew the mechanics of child care - feeding, diapering, etc - from babysitting. But nothing prepared me for how physically exhausting parenting is. I also wasn’t prepared for the relentlessness of parenting. Especially small, at risk kids during a pandemic.

In other ways, yeah. I have a lot of knowledge and experience in education, which has helped in some ways (and not in others).

There are no words for the relentlessness of it all.

Every other challenge of my life has had an end date, or I could carve out breaks for myself. As a parent it’s so hard and even when I make plans for myself, they often get ruined.

Right?! Friends with older children tell me this part gets better as the kids get older. They say you have other problems then - conflict at school or whatever - but you do start getting breaks. I am really hoping this is true.

[Anonymous]

A job which required learning new skills, long hours, and the ability to bounce back from failure multiple times and try again. Also growing up middle class where we cleaned our own house and outsource almost nothing. Also a boss from hell who I had to learn to deal with until I was able to find another job.

Babies (and now older kids) require a fair amount of physical work, which is boring and tedious but requires attention to detail. My job was exactly like that for many hours. The emotional part of it also requires the ability to stay cool under pressure especially when you want to scream.

I also learned when to call in some help. Two of my kids have special needs which impact their daily lives and I needed support to learn how to help them.

[Anonymous]

Nothing prepared me for a baby, but I think it was useful that my husband and I were already pretty domestic. We both worked basically 9-5, cooked and ate at home, shared chores, spent lots of time at home together. I know friends who had trouble with the domestic side of having babies bc they had basically worked or socialized for all their waking hours, ordered takeout for every meal, and had no sense of a home routine.

[Anonymous]

Teaching.

It helps me to break things down from another person’s point of view. I think a lot of parenting is teaching so I use classroom principles at home a lot — to motivate, engage, and inform. It comes naturally to me to teach and I really love the early years, like 1.5-6 year olds.

[Anonymous]

Being a criminal defense attorney was excellent prep for parenting.

[Anonymous]

I felt very prepared for parenthood and continue to feel up to the challenge. I really disagree that "nothing" can prepare you.

I do think that expectations matter a lot. I had a tough childhood and have experienced a lot of difficulty in my life. I went into parenthood with eyes wide open, and put it off for quite a while to wait and see if it was really something I wanted to take on. So the tough parts of parenting didn't come as a surprise and didn't really throw me. I expected it to be tough. I expected to really have to rise to the occasion. I knew from my own childhood what some of the challenges could be like, and I had well-honed skills from years of dealing with both childhood trauma and big challenges in adulthood. I knew myself very well, knew my triggers, knew how to care for myself and get perspective. I knew how to ask for help, how to communicate with my partner, how to stick to my values while also adapting to new situations.

I wonder if some of the "nothing can prepare you" folks have simply been fairly lucky in life in terms of not having to deal with really tough difficulties. Or, alternatively, if some of you have unresolved trauma that how wound up having to confront for the first time as parents (parenthood has absolutely resurfaced childhood trauma for me, though again, I have a experience dealing with it). I think if you go into parenting thinking, "Well this is going to be a little hard at first but then great, and I'm sure I"ll get the hang of it quick and then things will settle down," you may be in for a very rude awakening. But if you go into anticipating it will be one of the toughest things you do in your life, and you know to draw on your deep resources for dealing with a big challenge, it might not feel like such a shock to the system.

[Anonymous]

Years of therapy. Especially realizing other peoples actions/reactions aren’t all about me, which is helpful in not feeling like I’m failing as a mother when things don’t go 100% great (eg can’t get baby to nap, kid has a meltdown, etc). They are their own little people, I try to support them in all ways, but they will have their days, their personality quirks, etc, and their actions ultimately aren’t all about (or a reflection on) me. As a generally anxious person, I’ve found reminding myself of this to be really helpful over the years.

[Anonymous]

Living in a group house. It exposed me to the conditions: loud roommates, leaving their crap all over the house and kitchen. However, I never cleaned up after them so it didn't help too much. Kids are the sh!ttiest roommates in the world.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I felt very prepared for parenthood and continue to feel up to the challenge. I really disagree that "nothing" can prepare you.

I do think that expectations matter a lot. I had a tough childhood and have experienced a lot of difficulty in my life. I went into parenthood with eyes wide open, and put it off for quite a while to wait and see if it was really something I wanted to take on. So the tough parts of parenting didn't come as a surprise and didn't really throw me. I expected it to be tough. I expected to really have to rise to the occasion. I knew from my own childhood what some of the challenges could be like, and I had well-honed skills from years of dealing with both childhood trauma and big challenges in adulthood. I knew myself very well, knew my triggers, knew how to care for myself and get perspective. I knew how to ask for help, how to communicate with my partner, how to stick to my values while also adapting to new situations.

I wonder if some of the "nothing can prepare you" folks have simply been fairly lucky in life in terms of not having to deal with really tough difficulties. Or, alternatively, if some of you have unresolved trauma that how wound up having to confront for the first time as parents (parenthood has absolutely resurfaced childhood trauma for me, though again, I have a experience dealing with it). I think if you go into parenting thinking, "Well this is going to be a little hard at first but then great, and I'm sure I"ll get the hang of it quick and then things will settle down," you may be in for a very rude awakening. But if you go into anticipating it will be one of the toughest things you do in your life, and you know to draw on your deep resources for dealing with a big challenge, it might not feel like such a shock to the system.

This. I’m a PP who mentioned reflection as a skill and you nailed it. Lots of trauma, lots of work to resolve, emotional agility, etc.

[Anonymous]

Chronic insomnia. Going into having kids thinking it would be the hardest, most exhausting thing. Having low expectations didn’t prepare me exactly, but it was helpful to be realistic about how hard and relentless it would be.

[Anonymous]

Being married a couple of years before TTC helped solidify our relationship and was probably the single best parenting choice we could have made. We married on the young side so we had the time to wait and enjoy our honeymoon phase for quite awhile.

[Anonymous]

My dual major in biology and psychology with a plan to get a PhD in neuroscience. I went to totally different grad school and don’t do anything with science. But one kid has a genetic disorder and the other had brain cancer so I actually had some clue what the doctors were talking about.

Using my degrees in a way that I never could have anticipated.

[Anonymous]

I was going to say “nothing” but actually those two things in the OP would have been helpful.

But still the worst part of parenthood for me was lack of sleep and constantly catering to others’ needs at the beginning and nothing could have prepared me for that. And I’m glad nothing prepared me for that, I definitely wouldn’t wanted to go through it before!