I hate being a parent

[Diogenes of Sinope]

Man the fuck up dude

I have a non verbal autistic 6 year old boy (my av) and believe me, he is hard work at times

We can not do a lot of things together, as our child is very dependant of us. He can't (won't)self feed and he would just run out in front of a car in an instant if you take eye off him

He loves going to grandparents, but no chance would he stay overnight, as he is very much in his routine

It's certainly not all bad. He is mostly a happy boy, but takes terrible meltdowns and finds it hard to Express what he wants or feels due to being non verbal

However, I still see it as a blessing and me and my wife just accept it's our duty to look after his every need

Do I wake up mornings and wish someone had a gun to my head? Yes I do, but then I remember it isn't about me and I do what I can for my kid

You have the right mentality. Respect.

 

[Hotora86]

"We're both perfectionists"

Right there.

- Ease up on yourself, your wife, and your child.
- Change your expectations.
- Yes, your social life has dramatically changed. You won't do the things you used to do, with the people you used to hang out with. But, that is also the same if you simply aged. For instance, once we had a kid, I stopped trekking out into the wilderness to do some rock climbing with co-workers. Now, it could certainly be because I don't want my little kids to come out there with me OR it could also be because I realized that Ted from accounting is a shithead and didn't want to hang out with him any longer.
- Once your kid is school aged, you will start meeting new peers through that.
- Stop being a perfectionist regarding cleaning. The same thing would happen if you got a dog.

Thanks, you make some valid points. We do have an obsession for cleaning. But cleaning helps us calm down too. Maybe that's weird, dunno.

And yeah, expectations are a bitch. Better not have any - won't be disappointed.

 

[Hotora86]

Suffering is part of the human experience. But as a man you have to put your family before yourself. There are a few books I recommend that changed my life. Will totally change your psychology and help you understand how much of your happiness depends on you perspective of reality:

1) "The Luck Factor" By Richard Wiseman

Psychologist Richard Wiseman attempts to see if "Luck" is measurable. He takes 400 people or so and has them rate themselves o a scale of 1-5 on how lucky they think they are. He then interviews them, some had incredibly awful lives and luck while others had amazingly Lucy lives. He runs them both through a series of trials to test their "luck" while studying their behavior, for example"

-Having them walk through a path with an obscured $100 bill in random places throughout the trail, having them try to find a hidden message in a collage, having them try to unlink 2 metal loops which are designed to be impossible to unlink.

He found that although luck doesnt exist, there are psychological traits that allow people to notice more opportunities and handle failure better.

For example:

-Lucky people take more chances and dont fixate on failure. In fact lucky people fail more, but interpret their shortcomings as "it wasn't meant to be" or a "lesson that they learned from, grew from, and helped them prepare for their actual success"

-While unlucky people took less chances, and fixated on their failures, complaining about them, and quitting.

Thank you.
"It's all in the mind" like many sages have said before, huh? It's true and I've seen it work and experienced it myself. Mindset is everything. Sometimes it's hard to get the right one though.

2) "The As If Principle" by Richard Wiseman.

In this book Wiseman found that acting "as if" you had a particular trait, can help you acquire it faster. He had elderly people act as if they were in their 20s for about a moth and then studies them. He found that their memories improved and they exhibited physical changes like getting taller and their fingers getting longer, weirdly.

His overall point is that acting as if you have a trait that you want, will help you acquire it, rather than simply sitting there and fantasizing about it.

For example, Imagine you want to be happy. How does a happy person act? how is their posture? how do they sit? walk, talk? What is the expression on their face most of the time? If you act like this, even when youre aloe, eventually you will become happy.

My therapist must have read this book because that last part is something she said to me personally!

 

[Crom Cruach]

@Hotora86 Keep plugging away dude. Of course nobody ever tells you about the hard stuff. The species would die out.

You need to accept that your old life is over and you are never getting it back. That can be very had to adjust to but there are new joys to be had from children that are not possible if you don't have them.

The feelings of love and pride your son will give you as he grows and turns out to be a great person just cannot be got from anywhere else. No drug or sex can give you that feeling.

Also at about 4-5 years it's like a switch is thrown and you enter the golden years where they can do all the tedious stuff themselves (like shitting, walking around, eating properly, and communicating) and you will feel a big weight of pressure come off.

Word of warning, your relationship with your wife (as you knew it) - is over. Kids change everything. You will have to find a way to make a new relationship with each other because you are both different people now. This is very difficult to deal with a lot of people struggle with it so you are not alone there.

Good luck.

 

[Dana's Moonface]

You have the right mentality. Respect.

It's tough, but it isn't about me anymore

My life is devoted to him 100%

 

[Hotora86]

It's because if you got given a list of the pros and cons of being a parent we'd probably go extinct.

That being said it's somehow all worth it and I'd give my life for my daughter a billion times over.

LOL I totally agree.

 

[Diogenes of Sinope]

Thank you.
"It's all in the mind" like many sages have said before, huh? It's true and I've seen it work and experienced it myself. Mindset is everything. Sometimes it's hard to get the right one though.

My therapist must have read this book because that last part is something she said to me personally!

Here are summaries, if you don't want to, or don't have time to read them:

 

[Hellowhosthat]

LOL I totally agree.

"So I can offer you this thing that will take up most of your time, pretty much destroy your sleep pattern, cost you most of your money, cause you endless stress and ruin your social life and hobbies, interested?"

 

[Hotora86]

Fuck me, you have seriously put me off having a kid.

Sorry not sorry.

It's fucking hard, don't be fooled by the ads you see on TV where the cute babies are always smiling and the mothers are happy and with perfect hair and makeup and shit.

Plenty of parents will still tell you it's worth it - and I'm not gonna argue the opposite! But just be aware what you're getting yourself into.

Alan Watts once said that having a kid is like pulling a stranger off the street and swearing to love and protect him for the next 20 years. It's a joke obviously but has some truth in it...

 

[Hotora86]

I'm really sorry to hear that, OP. It sounds really tough. I just had my son born 4 days ago. Things are going great for us, but this seems like the wrong time to bring that up. I really hope that maybe as your little one grows out of the stage where they need constant attention from you, things will smooth out.

Young parent, I salute you! Good luck and I hope your kid is as low-effort as possible. It was hell for us for the first 3 months but it does get better... cleaning never stops tho.

As for your wife blowing up, look no one stays hot forever. It may have happened sooner than you like, but all of us are doomed to be ugly old people. Women only get like 20 years of their life where they are fuckable. The other 60 they are either in the -zone, or are saggy old Karen's. That's just true whether they have kids or not.

Sad but true.

 

[CatchnShoot]

No offence, but you sound self Absorbed, and softer than 3-ply.

 

[Hotora86]

Man the fuck up dude

I have a non verbal autistic 6 year old boy (my av) and believe me, he is hard work at times

We can not do a lot of things together, as our child is very dependant of us. He can't (won't)self feed and he would just run out in front of a car in an instant if you take eye off him

He loves going to grandparents, but no chance would he stay overnight, as he is very much in his routine

It's certainly not all bad. He is mostly a happy boy, but takes terrible meltdowns and finds it hard to Express what he wants or feels due to being non verbal

However, I still see it as a blessing and me and my wife just accept it's our duty to look after his every need

Do I wake up mornings and wish someone had a gun to my head? Yes I do, but then I remember it isn't about me and I do what I can for my kid

Props to you, man, I sympathize.

You're right, I have it much easier that you but we all feel down sometimes. I just needed to vent and that's all I did.

BTW I've worked with an autistic person in the Human Library project and I didn't find him that "weird" or anything, just different. I think autism should be accepted in our society.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Human_Library)

 

[Hotora86]

No offence, but you sound self Absorbed, and softer than 3-ply.

Yup, that's me alright.

 

[TheGreatA]

I think you have to forget about any attempts of being a perfectionist when it comes to parenting. The way I look at it, it's a marathon, not a 100m sprint. The parent should conserve their energy for the long-haul, and if needed, take some time for themselves to gather their energies. To make sure that they remain in a stable frame of mind. Staying strong and healthy for the times when it matters, is more important in my view than being around all the time, trying to do too much, and being driven crazy as a result of it.

I come from a country where people are not that sociable anyway and highly value their own time. People generally know when to withdraw to their own space, and reserve their social resources, which for Finns in particular tend to be very limited. When I look back on my childhood, it's not like my parents were always there. They were there when they were needed, and that's what mattered. I don't necessarily look back on when I was 2 or 3 years old, and wonder why my father may have been hitting the gym or something instead of reading stories every night. It's all a blur. You don't remember all the details, just the high-points in life.

I know it might be a bad point to make considering that it's the War Room, and we're all nuts over here, but just look at all of us. A lot of us probably didn't have the best parents, but we're still here. A bit nuts, maybe, but nonetheless, the point remains. You don't need to aspire for perfection in things of this nature.

Anyway, as the kids grow more independent and self-aware, the role of the father increases in importance. Being a person that the kid can emulate after, and whose authority they can respect, is what I see as the priority. We weren't built to just take care of kids, but rather, to take care of the family altogether. And sometimes a demanding kid might put the family in jeopardy, by driving everybody crazy and depriving others of their resources. That's when the father is needed to set limits and create order, which makes everybody else's life easier and more bearable.

Don't under-estimate the importance of taking care of yourself, to best fulfill your role.

 

[AnGrYcRoW]

You know, these kinds of words make parenting even harder than it already is. These are words that my therapist warned me about and told me to disregard. I bolded out what I mean in your post.

"You shouldn’t feel this way" is probably the worst thing you could say to a person suffering from depression or even just stress or anger issues. It never helps. It always hurts.

I KNOW I shouldn't have felt this way. But what if I can't stop feeling this way? Do you know how guilty I felt when I couldn't find love for my son inside of me? Do you know how painful it was? I can't FORCE myself to love - can you?

And questioning my normality is another super unhelpful thing. What's "normal" anyway? Why are you qualified to judge who is "normal" and who is not? What do you think these "non-normal" people should do? You know what some of them do? They commit suicide because society doesn't want to help them or accept them.

Now THIS is a War Room conversation now! Flame on!

That guy is an idiot , only read his posts to laugh at him .

If you're parents moving close played a Large part in you deciding to have a baby talk to them, explain the situation, hopefully they will come through .

Having my in-laws close by and being willing and happy to help with my son was a god send , would have been exponentially harder without them .

I imagine covid would make this time even harder, that's tough timing , as you work past this blame the difficulties on the pandemic , it might make easier having something out of your control to (justifiably) blame it on .

It sounds like you love kids , just not babies , before you know it you'll be past the baby/toddler phase and be home free.

To me it sounds like you need to focus on your relationship now , that's job two , job one still caring for your child , that won't change for quite awhile .

 

[AnGrYcRoW]

Bs men don’t start loving their children like moms. They probably start more. Women are cold, dude, they had to be to make up fur their strength deficiencies over the eons.

But yeah what you said is ridiculous. Women are generally more cold towards children than men, in functioning and evolved societies. In single mother communities you get the most child abuse, and that’s a medical fact.

You're a loon , stop giving advice to anyone on anything , you can't help anyone

 

[Zazen]

I hope your kid doesn't know you feel this way. Just remember this, that kid had no choice to enter this world. You brought him here. Maybe I sound cold here but you got to do this important job to make sure your child grows up in a stable family. One of the most important things to ensure a good future for your child is to have them grow up in a loving family.

 

[Lord_Impaler]

Jesus Christ.....some of the fucking responses in this thread. The mods should sticky this thread and title it:

“If you’re thinking about asking the warroom for life advice, read this thread first”

 

[mkess101]

Disclaimer: I love my child and I don't intend to abandon him or anything. That being said, I need to vent and if it you think complaining about your wife or kid is unacceptable - GTFO. Yes, #firstworldproblems but "it's still real to me, damn it!"

I never really thought through the idea of having kids. It seemed like something natural, something most people do, not really much of a dilemma. Generally, children have always liked me and would often flock to me ever since I reached my teens - especially kids aged 3 to 10. I'm a single child so perhaps I was unconsciously yearning for a sibling so I never minded hanging out with younger kids. What especially endeared them to me was the fact that I always treated them seriously, almost as equals - kids absolutely love that! Even now, in my 30s, whenever children approach me I never brush them off or ignore them, like some adults do. I listen with care and genuine interest, because sometimes kids really are interesting and smart and speak the simple truths that we, adults, keep forgetting...

Taking all that into account I intended to become a school teacher but my friends and family talked me out of it because, truth be told, a teacher in Eastern Europe earns barely enough money to support himself and is usually sentenced to the job for life, with most of them ending up depressed, disgruntled or alcoholics. I've seen that in the schools I went to. Long story short, I chose finance and management instead and I've been climbing the corporate ladder for the last 10 years. It's not a dream job by any stretch of the imagination but the conditions are decent and so is the pay.

OK, enough background, on to parenting. Like I said, I never gave it much thought. I married a wonderful girl at age 30 and from that day my parents started nagging me about kids. My parents-in-law didn't (as much) but my wife's brother already had kids so we felt some pressure to "catch up". We gave it some time but when my wife's BFF got pregnant she decided it was time for her as well. Surprisingly to us both, pregnancy was a breeze, no issues whatsoever and 17 months ago a healthy and cute little boy was born. That's when shit hit the fan...

My wife was both mentally and physically scarred by the experience and somewhat mistreated by the hospital staff so she developed postpartum depression - and unfortunately so did I. (Yes, men can also get PPD, google it.) We felt like shit parents for the first few months. We couldn't handle the stress and the pressure of responsibility. We're both perfectionists and the chaos that ensued was probably too much for us. We took care of the baby alright, it was well fed and clean and dry etc but we'd just sulk and quarrel constantly. I openly regretted my decision (to have kids) and my wife would be furious whenever I'd mention it. Even worse, my wife loved the little one but I myself could not feel a thing. I was just robotically feeding, cleaning, taking care but feeling emotionally empty inside... I became suicidal at one point. I genuinely went to the top floor in the office building to see if the window could be opened and if there was a clear path for me to drop 10 stories to the ground... it was my wife's birthday and on that day I came home and told her that I contemplated suicide.

Luckily I never submitted to those urges, I abhorred them and did the right thing - went to therapy. The psychologist really helped me, she told me that some men don't develop feelings for their child from day one - and that it was OK. I needed time and help - and I got both. I climbed out of depression and even arranged therapy for my wife - which also helped her. We were able to go on.

Unfortunately this is not the "happy ending". The last 17 months in general has still been insanely hard for both of us. We were both very active before pregnancy - we'd go out, do sports, travel, read a lot, watch movies together etc. All of this vanished - no more dining, no sports, no travel, no time for movies, only audiobooks or podcasts give us some intellectual entertainment during the incessant cleaning. My wife ended up with Hashimoto's thyroiditis and turned into Jabba the Hut with constant mood swings, similar to permanent PMS. My bad back got worse, old injuries came back, even ones I never knew I had. I was always the calm and patient one in our duet but I find myself in fits of rage or depressed more and more often as time passes. And to cap it off, my parents (who were the ones so obsessed with getting a grandchild) were supposed to move countries to live closer to us but have postponed that indefinitely - first due to their oh-so-important day jobs and now due to the pandemic. They visited us TWICE in 17 months.

I'm happy to say that our son is healthy and quick-witted - but this surprisingly often becomes a problem for us. He is constantly reaching for stuff he isn't supposed to touch, getting through any blockade or obstruction we set up to keep him out of danger. He even climbs fucking furniture! Apart from that he is moody, gets annoyed quickly, is VERY loud (even the pediatrician says so) and makes a huge mess out of anything he can get his hands on. The cleaning, wiping, vacuuming, washing and sweeping NEVER ENDS, it's like 90% of what we do every day. Some parents just let their kids run amok and live in a pigsty but we just can't. And don't get me started on the lack of sleep...

Anyway, I woke up to the sound of screams today (as every day) and during my son's third change of clothes within 2 hrs I got really angry with him and with this whole deal. My wife noticed and, though very disgruntled by my behavior, took him out for a walk in the stroller. So I took the PC and went on Sherdog to vent. I guess I'm done now and I feel a bit calmer.

So, am I a shit parent or do you Sherdads have the same feelings sometimes?
Let me know and thanks for reading to the very end - I admire your attention span.

Being a parent is both the most difficult and best thing ever. What you're feeling isn't abnormal, but you gotta go for help anytime you feel things starting to slip even a little into the depression/suicide area.

And the only other real recommendation I have is that you and your wife gotta have great communication and work as a team. If she's feeling super stressed or overwhelmed and you're in a pretty good place, offer to take over and tell her to take some time and do something just for her. And vice versa. Single parents don't have that option. You do, and you gotta take advantage of it (ESPECIALLY when the kid is really young). My daughter is 11 and it DOES get easier in a general sense. The stresses as they grow don't go away, they change but in my experience they become less intense.

I lied, one other recommendation: Stop and take as much joy as you can out of the good moments. Those times when you look at your kid and think "Holy shit, what a miracle this is." Revel in it. And draw on it as much as you can during the super stressful times.

Hang in there, you're going to be okay.

 

[CatchnShoot]

Yup, that's me alright.

The physical and mental strengths don't line up, broseph.
You are out of balance.

Look how tough I am, look what I have achieved. Self-Absorbed.
You are now the second or third most important person in your life. Or you can just wallow in self-pity, whatevs.