I genuinely thought I had parenting figured out after surviving the newborn phase.
And honestly, the newborn stage was not even that bad. Stressful? Yes. Sleep deprivation? Absolutely. But generally speaking, your main responsibility is just keeping this tiny human alive. Feed them, clean them, burp them, stop them from swallowing suspicious objects off the floor and occasionally panic because they sneezed too aggressively.
Simple enough abi?
Then that baby becomes a toddler and suddenly your entire life becomes one long hostage negotiation with a very short person who has zero survival instincts and the confidence of a billionaire tech founder.
Toddlers do not simply exist in peace, they want problems always. They wake up every morning with a mission to test both the structural integrity of your home and the emotional stability of your spirit. At this point, I am convinced that part of their developmental process involves trying to accidentally kill themselves every five minutes while maintaining direct eye contact with you.
In all this, I have learned a few things.
- I finally understand why people have more than one child.
Unless you are a certified cardio merchant, one child will humble you physically because with one child, YOU are the entertainment. You are Bluey, Disney Channel, WWE, Cocomelon, the jungle gym, the backup dancer and customer care representative all at once. You cannot sit peacefully for five minutes because someone is climbing your neck like Mount Kilimanjaro while demanding that you bark like a dog.
Now I understand why parents with two children always look calmer.
Those kids distract each other. They fight each other. They entertain each other. With one child, the burden is entirely upon you. Once there are two, you become more of a referee than a performer. “Stop biting your brother.” “Don’t use her head as a footstool.” “No, we do not lick television screens in this house.” Then you quietly disappear back to your PlayStation like a retired footballer returning for one final season.
I am still in the one-child phase and I have already concluded that it is lowkey the hardest configuration. Have two if you can. Or none at all. God understands.
- Parenting a toddler makes corporate pressure feel fake.
I used to think adapting under pressure at work was impressive until I became a father. Toddlers are basically tiny startup founders running operations entirely on chaos and vibes. One minute, your child is counting numbers flawlessly and using words that make you think, “Wow. Genius.” The next minute, the same person removes their diaper five minutes before preschool and launches biological warfare across the living room.
And somehow, it always happens when you are already late.
I have sent more “Running slightly behind” emails as a parent than at any other point in my professional career.
The funny thing is that after a while, you become completely yuck-proof. Before fatherhood, certain things would disgust me deeply. Now? Nothing moves me anymore. Spit-up on your shirt? Light work. A child sneezing directly into your eyeball? Character development. Catching vomit with your bare hands because your parental instincts activated faster than your common sense? Normal Tuesday behaviour.
At some point, your humanity leaves your body and you evolve into a war veteran. I guess that’s why this stage is called the trenches.
- Nothing is yours anymore
Forget ownership. Forget personal space. Forget peace. Your bed no longer belongs to you. It belongs to a tiny dictator with terrible sleeping habits and zero respect for human anatomy.
Nobody warned me that parenthood involves spending half your nights hanging off the edge of the mattress while a two-foot human somehow occupies 83% of the available surface area diagonally. And the craziest part is that they NEVER sleep in their own position. No. Their preferred arrangement is horizontal across your internal organs.
Meanwhile, there is enough space on the bed for everybody to sleep comfortably, but somehow your child specifically wants your head as a mattress.
Now, I find myself sleeping in positions that would concern chiropractors.
- I finally understand why toddlers develop God-complexes.
Imagine your life from a toddler’s perspective. Within a ridiculously short period of time, you learn an entirely new language. You double your height. You unlock walking, then running, then climbing furniture despite repeated warnings from upper management. Every room erupts with applause when you identify a goat correctly. You point at juice and it appears. You cry and a full committee assembles. You reject food and adults begin negotiating with YOU.
So it’s no wonder why toddlers think they run civilisation.
- Say goodbye to extended weekend sleep
Every weekday morning is a battle. You will beg, negotiate, threaten and perform miracles just to get one child to brush their teeth and wear slippers. Then after successfully preparing them for school, there is always the looming possibility that they suddenly announce, “I want to poo.”
But you know what, weekends are somehow worse.
The one day YOU want to sleep till 7am suddenly becomes the day your child transforms into an over motivated gym instructor.
5:17 AM.
“Da-da wake up.”
“Da-da dinosaur. Rawr!”
“Da-da come.”
“Da-da watch this.”
Nobody can convince me toddlers do not do this intentionally. They sense joy and immediately move against it.
All that said, in the middle of all this chaos, parenting changes you.
You become more patient, more responsible, more intentional. You start caring more deeply about stability, about your career, about the future, about becoming better generally. And weirdly enough, some of the smallest moments become the most satisfying.
Like finally reaching the stage where you can send your child to collect the remote that is five feet away from you.
That is real generational success. To paraphrase the Great Jose Mourinho, that is football heritage.
Totally loved reading this!