Just Being A Parent

There is a title that covers a multitude of sins. Let’s be fair if you are a parent, you will know what I’m talking about. It’s tough,difficult,hard, exhausting, in fact it’s the toughest job that as an adult we will ever have. We will wing it make it up as we go along and will constantly get it wrong. As a parent sometimes you are damm if you do or damm if you don’t.

No matter how old your children are they will constantly have melt-downs, or keep you up half the night as babies, and actually as teenagers they will keep you awake because when they start going to town partying, you will lie in your bed waiting for the key to go in lock and yes! You can go to sleep they are home in one piece. The indestructible teenager is back in one piece. That feeling of relief is indescribable.

Parenting is a 24/7 job for the rest of your natural life. We will try to educate our children to be good people. But also make them aware of the dangers of this incredibly messed up world. Teach them right from wrong and hopefully make them a lot more tolerant than the previous generations.

It has never ceased to amaze me, that when your baby is born it’s placed in your arms and that’s it off you go to be a parent. There is no handbook or instruction guide. It’s the only occupation ever that you are not shown what to do. You learn on the job. Because every child is different. With completely different needs.

It may sound like I’m being a bit negative about parenting, well quite the opposite. Being a parent changes you as a person that you will not recognise in just a few short weeks. You will find out that you have buttons that can be pressed that you never thought you had, that’s what kids do, they learn that very quick. Haha! And believe me that doesn’t stop when they get older.

So what makes us to decide to be parents in the first place, it is after all not easy, because in my opinion it completes you as a human being as a person. Children are a blessing they are the extension of you, something that is truly unique to us parents.

They fill your life and hearts with joy and love that only children can do. Those first moments that you see like their first step or their first word starting school, going to university. I have experienced all of them five times over and all the money in the world couldn’t buy the happiness that I felt at all of those moments.

Becoming a parent is simply not easy, but it’s outweighed by the wonderful moments and magical things that only children give. The love you share with your children is like no other. Respect the love and it will be there till your last breath. What more could you ask for in life, I don’t think anything. Children make us who we are and we hopefully pass that knowledge on to them.

It doesn’t matter how many sleepless nights you have, nappies you have changed gone though the heartbreak of a broken romance that all teenagers have, being a dad is a blessing, that I’m fortunate enough to be a dad five times and the best, wonderful and most difficult job I have ever done, and when they give you a hug and kiss and say those magic words I love you. Nothing else in this world matters.

What does it mean to you being a parent. I would love to hear.