To hate sentimentality about the early years going fast?

It’s obviously both. There are magical wonderful moments with babies and toddlers (as well as an ocean of exhaustion and worry and misery). And those days will never return along with your more youthful years - I think you can mourn stages of your own life as well as your childrens. For me it was one of the most challenging and best bits of my life so far. I’m glad I experienced it - but not mad keen to experience it again. And wistful about it.

I agree.
OP come back in 10 years time when you’re dealing with hormonal, angst ridden 16 year olds. Wanting so desperately for them to be happy and successful but having so little control around the things that determine that. (including the choices they make)
Staring at the tail end of their years at home with you.
I love my girls and am fascinated to see the women they are becoming but I deeply miss the small people they used to be.
Of course you feel the way you feel Right now. You’re still in the thick of it. Maybe you’ll always feel that way. But parents who are 10 years ahead of you may quite possibly be right. You may change the way you feel.

The older mine got the better i felt tbh.
I dont miss the sleepless nights i hated the school years school runs etc.
I also hated when someone would say your miss this when he grows up NO i wont.
Or when your told your be sad when they move out NO couldn't wait for that part.
My son is 23 next year moved out and got his own life.
Ive enjoyd watching the man he has become.

Its like new chapters and im now on a new chapter for me.
Im 40 next year and im celebrating in Thailand because I can.

Im pleased i had him young and i love him to bits.

But NO amount of money could get me to go back to them days.
Baby toddler days over teen years over its my time now.

We are both on to new chapters in life and i love it.

Couldn’t agree more, but it really doesn’t last long even though when you’re in it you feel like it’s an eternity and you (as an individual) are being held hostage!

typo

God I hated the early years.

I mean, yes, I thought DS was cute, yes I look back at photos and videos and think those specific instances were good times, and I'm glad I got to experience them, but I don't think wow I wish I could go back to those times.

DS is still young, only 6, and I am much preferring living in the present. It feels like it's taken a long time to get to a point where we have mutual understanding, where I don't feel like a zombie, and where I feel like we're at a point where we've fallen into our own little routines and it's not such a slog anymore.

I can't wait to see what he's like when he's older. I'm nostalgic for the future. There are all these things I want to do with him that he's not old enough to do yet, or wouldn't fully enjoy. I get excited when I think about taking him on his first big rollercoaster, or plan a big holiday WITH him and not just for him, and he finds me doing mum things embarassing.

I know someone with a new baby who is saying oh I just don’t want them to get a minute older. I thought whoah damn girl, that’s lovely, when she said it - because I never felt that way. That’s possibly because with DC1 I had PND and was very much alone, was so anxious that every week older he got all I felt was a sort of grim relief that we had outrun death. And with DC2 I was just tired and too busy to cherish the time, though I was not PND’d and so slightly more relaxed that no-one would die of cot death or have some terrible mishap. I also thought (accurately) ‘will I fuck miss being awake 20 hours a day.’ However - I feel like if someone handed me a baby now (they’d have to, my body couldn’t cope with birth) I suspect I’d see things differently. Possibly because I’m closer to death than birth myself. Also I wouldn’t be driven into utter terror by my own hormones!

Personally, I don’t see it as sentimentality, which I’ve heard described as ‘the unearned emotion.’ To me, the people who’re looking back saying didn’t it go fast, have all worked like fuck to get through it whether they enjoyed it or not. I think maybe too many of us are still not able to find support, mental space or respite and so cannot fully enjoy the moment. That’s a shame.

Perhaps it’s just the human condition. But either way, every version of a child passes into the ether and disappears into memory, never to be met again. Obvious, yes, but also sad (to me). Occasionally I wish I could encounter little them again, from my older perspective. I would also echo the opinion of the poster who said exams/bullying/hormones are a fuck of a sight more stressful than the keeping them fed, clean and entertained stage. I’d do a bum or jigsaw happily 😀

So despite the new stresses, I do try to gather my rosebuds a bit more now cos time is moving like lightning, it’ll all be over soon and I know I’ll miss these days too. Perhaps it’s mortality, perhaps it’s wanting what we haven’t got. Each to their own, though, you know yourself best, why bother what other people say?

I think a lot of it stems from the fact we hanker after the times we maintained a semblance of control, lol. Once they start arguing back with proper thought our reasoning, it goes downhill lol

I remember nearly crying when I was with DS1 when he was 9 months old and not sleeping for longer than 45 minutes at a stretch (ASD it turns out) and had been doing this for five months and someone said ‘this will be the best bit of parenting’. Luckily another lady saw my face and told me firmly that this hadn’t been true for her. He is nearly 13 and I cannot imagine anything I want less than to have him as a baby again. Sure, it was easier not to watch him struggle socially but dear god, we were being subjected to something that’s banned as torture by the Geneva Convention.

I don’t know.. it felt slow at the time but my eldest is nearly 14 and it really does feel like I blinked and now there’s this big tall almost-man. Puberty does hit like a ton of bricks though- he just suddenly shot up, voice broke etc.

Often I really do miss the little, cuddly boy he used to be and I miss the good parts like bedtime stories, the extra excitement of Christmas, little trips out and how the world was full of magic and wonder for him. My youngest is a few years younger and just about still cute but quickly growing up.

But there is so much I love about this stage compared to when they were a toddler and baby- no pushchairs, high chairs, nappies, days out and holidays being a military operation. My youngest has additional needs and the toddler years were hellish with meltdowns and tantrums. I feel so much more free now and love being out as a family. But then I’m probably going to miss this stage as they get even older.

Toddler upwards was fun (yes, even the teenage years...I guess I was lucky there), but newborn to toddler....nope don't miss that at all.

Everyone’s different and you’re entitled to your feelings about your own life. I don’t feel the same way as you but nobody can tell you you’re wrong so I voted YANBU

So, I loved the baby/toddler years and DS was spectacularly easy and adorable at that age (not now!)

I STILL find all those mawkish “if only you had just one more day with their little hand in yours” posts!! They make me want to vomit. Basically shaming mothers for not being grateful enough about being woken up five times a night every night for three years.

It did sound really catty and that wasn’t the intention - it was meant a lot more flippantly than it came over. So my apologies for that. I didn’t mean to be horrible it wasn’t the intent behind it, I swear!

Thanks, @higlandcoo , I appreciate that.

I think with teen and adult children the hours are easier but the problems are harder because you can't solve them or outlast them. This can make you nostalgic from time to time about the days when a cuddle, feed and nappy change could solve 90% of issues. Or when a kiss on a scraped knee and some time with Lego or a Pixar film made it better.

Once you've got out of the physically exhausting stage the mental work levels up. Thank the gods, because both at once would have done anyone in!

Bullying, SEN diagnosis, the hellscape that is high school, hormones, fights, depression, homophobic bullying, suicidal ideation, redundancy as a result, steering them away from seeking refuge in drink or drugs, advocating for them... being dog tired and sleep deprived looks easy in comparison even though I know damned well it wasn't.

If there were time travel I wish everyone could access a day in the past and one in the future, once in a while. My exhausted mother of 3 under 5 self would relish a day to herself, and my current parent of adults would like a day of physical parenting.

That period of having a one year old and three year old was horrible.

I can imagine!

There are 7 years between mine.

I can’t think of any other instance where it’s insisted you’ll enjoy / miss something.

I think people sometimes say it because, when they do finally reach 18 and move on, it's a shock at how quickly it passed and you wonder how you got there so fast. When you got there so fast because you were entrenched in parenting for so many years and one day merged into another a lot of the time - schooldays, school holidays, laundry, cooking, housework, work, childcare... it's all just a blur and sometimes you don't have the capacity to appreciate it and some of it isn't stuff anyone would enjoy!

You wish you'd done x, y or z differently and you forget that you did the best you could at the time.

When people say it, they're expressing their own feelings rather than trying to tell you how you should feel.

It's that whole, you can't learn from other peoples experiences. But people will have said it to them and they will have felt much how you feel now. And then they got out the otherside and realise they also feel that way after all.

I know what you mean OP - I had three under four and found it really hard. I don't look back on those days sentimentally, or at least I thought I didn't.

But..... just recently I've felt a real longing to hold a baby. I haven't done it for so long and I don't know anyone with babies any more.

I expect it's hormonal. Damn menopause!

Particularly when several of us are on the other side and have said we aren’t sentimental about it. Nothing wrong with people who are sentimental about the baby years but irritating to insist that you will definitely miss it as everyone does, when clearly not everyone does.

Not to sound patronising but how cam you realky know when you've been a mother for less than 5 years? I've been a mother for 20 years and my perspective has changed a lot over the years.

For me, one of my DC caused me the hardest time, when they were 15. I am very sentimental about the younger years as we were so happy then, I don't think you should assume that the worst part is over!

See how you feel in 15 years time.

I do wonder if our own age plays a part, I was early 20's when DC were young, I may have felt differently had I had DC at my current age.

I’ll never ever be one of those people to tell someone with small children to “enjoy it while you can!” As I remember how irritating it was.

but now mine are moody hormonal teens… I totally get it.

It does feel endless when you’re in it, and at the time I hated the pre-school years, yet now (with them squarely on the rear view mirror) I do look back at them with great fondness. I guess you remember the fun and cute bits, but erase the mundane and sloggy bits.
My guess is that your current irritation with the sentimental musings of others will dissipate as you move into that timeframe yourself. You aren’t there yet.

I work with early years children and so I definitely have the reality dose daily, my own four range between 27yo -16yo now. I am nostalgic for parts of their childhood but I’m looking forward to be over the hands on parenting stage. I’m enjoying parenting adult children and how our relationship has changed.