Last time I wrote about the reasons I love being a parent. This time I am not sugarcoating anything. Here is what nobody tells you about parenting – at least not honestly enough.
1. Your time disappears completely
I have three children under five – Ms who is four, Mr who is two and has Down syndrome, and B who is four months old. Personal time is not reduced. It is gone. When one is sleeping another is crying. When two are calm the third needs something. When a gap appears there are emails, dishes, dinner to make. The only window that belongs to me is carved out of sleep, and most of the time sleep wins. It should.
2. Teaching a toddler to use a spoon
I was raised to respect food. Handing a one or two-year-old a spoon is an act of faith that the ceiling will survive. The cleanup afterwards is its own event. I have fed both my older children myself for longer than the specialists approve of – I know they grimace at this – but I genuinely cannot watch food distributed across every surface while pretending it is fine. Ms eats properly now. Mr is learning slowly. It is not a quick process for anyone and for a child with Down syndrome it takes longer still. I accept that. I do not enjoy it.
3. Getting them to sleep
With a baby it is straightforward – nursing works, always. The older ones are another matter entirely. Ms finally settled into sleeping in her own bed at nearly four years old. Until then it was what I am living with Mr now: I have to stay beside him until he is fully asleep, because the moment I move he is on the floor pulling things off shelves, completely awake, regardless of how tired he is. While I wait him out he rolls and kicks and thrashes against the wall. B is on the other side of me nursing. The chaos of that half hour every night is something I find genuinely difficult to describe calmly, because I do not experience it calmly.
4. The people who disappear
I have received real help from my partner’s father, from neighbours, and from the municipality. I am genuinely grateful for all of it. But when we posted – both of us separately – looking for childcare help after my c-section, when I physically could not get out of bed properly for weeks, when I was not allowed to lift anything heavier than the baby for two months – almost no one came. Friends, relatives, people who would describe themselves as close to us. Gone.
What nobody tells you about parenting is how clearly it shows you who is actually there. The loneliness of that realisation is real, and it does not go away quickly. It makes me less interested in maintaining certain relationships, which is probably not healthy but is at least honest.
5. The mornings
Mr wakes at six. The moment he does I have to move immediately – close Ms’s door so she can keep sleeping, intercept him before he reaches B, move the robot vacuum before he trips on it, latch the bathroom door. Then potty, washing, getting him settled. By the time I sit down and think about breakfast for either of us, an hour or two has passed at full speed. There is no easing into the day. The day begins at a sprint.
6. Potty training
I will try a new approach next week because what I have been doing has not worked. With Ms it was complete failure at home – six accidents a day, no progress, until she watched other children at nursery at three years old and simply started doing it. With Mr we have had more than two weeks of finding every surface in the house wet. The sofa, the floor, everywhere. He occasionally uses the potty. Mostly he does not. I know some of this is my approach. I also know that with Down syndrome this process takes longer than the average timeline. Neither of those facts makes it easier to live inside right now.
7. Illness
When the children are sick I become a full-time medical support worker. Saline drops, the nasal aspirator, steam, temperature monitoring, comfort through the night. The cost of hygiene supplies alone during a sick stretch is significant. A fever I can handle – it passes in a day or two. A cold or cough lasts weeks, and weeks of broken sleep on top of already broken sleep is genuinely wearing. Mr’s anatomy makes ear and eye infections more common and more serious than they might be otherwise. We have had a lot of them.
8. Constant vigilance
I cannot relax. Not inside, not outside, not anywhere. If Mr is on his balance bike he is contained for a few minutes. If he is walking he needs eyes on him every second – he has walked into mud puddles, rubbed himself against neighbours’ cars and barbecue grills, picked up dangerous objects, and for a period put everything imaginable into his mouth. The mouth phase has mostly passed but the vigilance has not. When he is near B he is usually gentle, but usually is not always, and I cannot look away long enough to find out what usually becomes when I do.
9. Going anywhere
I remember putting a dress on, picking up my bag, and leaving. Five minutes from decision to door. Now leaving requires packing for every possibility, loading everyone, managing the logistics of who sits where and who needs what and whether we remembered the thing that is always forgotten. At events I cannot listen to the music or follow the conversation because someone is always crying or wandering or needing something. It is sometimes easier to simply not go. Which means we miss things. Which is its own particular loss.
10. The mouth phase
Both my older children went through a period of putting everything into their mouths. With Ms I could not sit outside on a blanket without her crawling to the edge and eating dried leaves and gravel. With Mr it went on longer and the objects were more alarming – soil, plant debris, wood from old tree stumps, things I had to retrieve from his throat. This phase passes. While it is happening it is one of the most stressful ongoing features of daily life, because the window between he is fine and I need to act is very small.
11. Everything locked away and stored at height
All cupboards are locked. All drawers are locked. There is a gate between the kitchen and the living room. Everything that cannot be locked is on a high shelf. If Ms wants to draw she has to climb to reach her things, take them to another room, close the door, and put everything back afterwards. A few months ago Mr found a piece of chalk and managed to scratch near his eye badly enough that we nearly needed emergency services. He destroyed Ms’s drawings and ate the paper. He has been much gentler recently, but that memory stays.
The question I ask myself sometimes is: why can’t things just be on the shelf? Why does every object require a system? The answer is obvious and I know it. It does not make the daily reality of unlocking and relocking every cupboard any less tedious.
The honest summary
Parenthood is not a failure because it is hard. I want to say that clearly, because I am prone to reading my own exhaustion as evidence that I have done something wrong. I do not think that is true. I think this particular combination – three children under five, one with Down syndrome, recovery from a third c-section, limited outside help – is genuinely a lot, and feeling overwhelmed by it is a reasonable response.
What nobody tells you about parenting is not any single item on this list. It is the cumulative weight of all of them together, every day, without a break. That is what it actually is. And it is also still worth it – I wrote that last time and I meant it. Both things are true at once. That is probably the most honest thing I can say about any of this.
You are not alone.
If this story resonated with you and you’d like to go deeper, you can explore my e-book Our Journey – A Different Path. It offers honest reflections and lived experience beyond this post.
If you’re looking for practical support, I’ve created Routine Templates to help parents and children navigate daily life with more clarity, structure, and understanding.
You can also read my previous posts or follow along on Instagram @parentguidancehub, where I share everyday reflections on parenting, family life, and finding balance.
Leave a Reply