Parenthood 2

I have been a parent for eighteen years and I have just realised an important fact. Slow of me I know but often when a thing is always there you fail to notice it after a while. However it has come to my conscious attention that parenthood is a series of anxieties and it is only the intensity that varies. We have our joys and our sorrows but in between these high and low points we worry. Worry they are getting a fair go, worry they are giving others a fair go, worry they are safe, worry they are well, worry they aren’t hurt, worry about countless things. These concerns come and go constantly with seldom a break and no matter how old your children become, they continue. The only difference is the details. 

As parents we take on our children’s problems and suffer along with them when they meet life’s obstacles, and the more children you have the more anxieties you have to deal with, or this is how it seem to me. You can only pray that they do not all peak at the same time but by the same token hope that their ebbs coincide. Therefore I have come to the conclusion that it is at times when these anxieties are low that are the days to be truly celebrated. Not birthdays or milestones or graduations, weddings etc, it is the days when our kids are as happy as they can be with their lot and the level of anxiety is at a point where we are able to sleep at night that we as parents should take the time to toast ourselves. Because we can be sure in the knowledge, that at any given moment, it will all turn to crap.