Being a Parent – The Hardest Job in the World
If you’re a parent yourself you’ll know exactly what I mean. I always say and truly believe that having kids is the best and worst thing that can happen to you. When we’re in a ‘worst thing’ phase going and volunteering overseas seems like an extremely attractive alternative to staying at home with three squabbling children. If only children came out with a Haynes Manual strapped to their leg. Imagine that!
Children, it seems, can squabble over absolutely everything, and even the tiniest thing can cause an argument that can reach epic proportions. You find yourself having to muster every iota of peacekeeping skill that you can just to avoid them seriously injuring one another.
Having children certainly is a shock to the system. After years of living (as you now realise) completely selfishly and having nobody to worry about apart from yourself, you now have to worry about everyone else BUT yourself! You find yourself disappearing into some anonymous existence and become ‘so and so’s mum’.
Take bedtimes, for example. We try and have a quiet 5 minutes and a cuddle on the sofa to calm them before they go to bed but what happens? Arguments over who sits next to whom. You have to resign yourself to the fact that as a parent you are never going to win and that you won’t be able to reason with them until they’re, oh, about 30?
On the plus side of parenting, there’s nothing like a big tight cuddle or the way that they fly out of school shouting ‘MUMMMMMMMYYYY!’ There’s nothing to beat the moment when they tell you they love you, or when they do something kind for their siblings without being told to or having been threatened with a cold shower if they don’t!
So, I’m still in two minds – volunteering overseas or staying at home with the children. In terms of difficulty they’re probably on a par with one another. Job satisfaction? I’d say parenting may just about have the edge. Before I go all sentimental here it must be said that I am sitting in my nice quiet house with no children around me. Had I been writing this when the children were home from school, blasting the house out with noise and half killing each other barely before they’d got out of the car then I may well have gone for the other option....