Why Does Nobody Tell You How Boring Parenting Is?
Between the milestones is an enormous amount of standing in a hallway holding a shoe. Nobody warns you, and the silence makes perfectly normal parents feel broken.
· 1 min read
Everyone prepares you for the exhaustion. Nobody prepares you for the tedium.
You will spend a genuinely remarkable portion of the next few years standing in a hallway holding one shoe, waiting for a small person to locate the other shoe, which is in their hand.
The highlight reel is not lying, it is editing
First steps, first words, the belly laugh in the bath — all real. What gets cut is the ninety minutes on either side, which consisted of negotiating about socks. Nobody posts the socks. So every parent privately concludes the boredom is a personal defect.
It is not a sign you love them less
You can adore a person and find the fourteenth reading of the same book about a truck genuinely mind-numbing. Both are true at once. Boredom is a fact about the activity, not a verdict on the relationship, and confusing the two is where the guilt comes from.
Say it out loud to another parent
The relief on their face will tell you everything. The tedium is close to universal and almost never spoken about, which is the only reason it feels isolating. It is the most ordinary part of the job, and the least admitted.
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