EVERY DAMN PERSON WOULD FAIL

If there existed a mandatory aptitude and competence test to become a parent, human life would cease to exist. Because EVERY DAMN PERSON WOULD FAIL. No coaching, no book, no podcast can prepare you for parenthood. The only way you can test being a parent is by actually becoming one. With a real kid.

A kid who’s dependent on you 24/7 for every single thing. A kid who has so many needs but can’t communicate them with you for the first couple of years, so you are left guessing what could be the reason they are crying their lungs out at 1 am. A kid who doesn’t need to know how zapped out you are due to sleep deprivation and work when they want to fed and comforted. A kid who will poop, noisily, or projectile vomit at the absolute most inconvenient time and place.

You are essentially bringing into the world a living being that’s 1/10th your size but yanks you out and replaces itself as the center of your universe.

Planning years ahead doesn’t prepare you. Nine months of pregnancy doesn’t prepare you. N number of advices from those around doesn’t prepare you. There’s nothing you can do except take a deep breath, dive, and hope you survive.

Us parents become our children’s care takers, healers, counsellors, chefs, nutritionists, butlers, teachers without any training. We are bound to make a mistake. Or two. Or so many that we wonder whether our child will grow up to write a book about her traumatic childhood.

However, one thing remains undisputed- most of us voluntarily wake up to get wrung out and discarded like a dirty dishcloth by the world - day after day, rain or shine- just so we can give our little humans a life better than we have. I didnt know it was possible to so fervently wish success and goodness for another person or feel so much concern for someone that it keeps you up at night. We want them to scale heights that are too dizzy for us and go further into the horizon than we ever could. If we could, we would string every possible opportunity under the sun to shine their soul and offer to them on a plate.

This is what we want. But what we do is a lot of trial and error, each child a guinea pig as we test out our philosophies on them, praying to God they don’t end up as serial killers. Our kids won’t be as forgiving about our shortcomings as we hope, but they will eventually come around and realize that you-their parent- did the absolute best you could for them at every point in time. When? Yes, it’s what our parents always told us - When they finally have their own kids. And so, as they say, life comes to a full circle. We can only hope it’s the best life we could have modelled for our little humans.