Things People Should, But Don't, Tell You About Having Kids

People giving parenting tips often come across as guilt-tripping, with the subtext being "You're doing it wrong." Reading this list, it occurs to me that encouragement, reassurance, and advice is much better given when people simply talk about their own experiences instead of telling you what you should do. We're all just doing the best we know how as we go along. Buzzfeed complied a list of reader-submitted observations about raising children and how it changes you (or most people, because there are always exceptions). They are spot-on yet hard to properly convey to someone who hasn't specifically asked about it.

1. That as your children grow, you'll miss the person they were.

"Where is that 3-year-old who crawled onto my lap to read books and covered the driveway with chalk art? Where is the 10-year-old who quietly drew for hours every night? Where is the goofy 14-year-old who told me hilarious stories about his day, every day? They're gone, forever." —Jessica Margolin

3. That for the most part, raising a child simply involves a lot of really boring tasks.

"Those moments of exhilaration or despair are real, but few and far between. There's no such thing as 'quality time', only 'quantity time' in which those extraordinary moments sometimes occur. I don't care about anyone who would 'take a bullet for their children' because we would all do that. What I care a lot about are the parents who simply show up every day. And the next day. And the next. Tying shoelaces, singing the f[*****]g 'Little Green Frog' song 50 times, keeping a running mental account of food intake to decide if the next meal should be heavy on the protein or fats or fiber, and smiling when their kids walk in the room even when they would kill for five minutes alone. Yep, these are the people who deserve an award for perseverance." —Imogen Moore

As to #1, the only thing you can do is to appreciate the new person your child continually becomes. And believe it or not, you'll eventually miss #3 ...a little. There are 24 of these observations in a list at Buzzfeed.