To feel it hasn’t gone fast

[alloftheothers]

DS(4) got his school place yesterday.

I’m surrounded by ‘hasn’t it gone fasts’ on social media which obviously take with a pinch of salt but also real life. It’s gone so fast, where has that gone, hasn’t it flown by.

I seem to be a lone voice in thinking ‘no.’ Light years have passed since I was pregnant with DS! It feels like ages since I was pregnant with him and he was a baby, even a toddler.

I love him to bits of course but it definitely feels a long time since I was childfree!

Yeah I think this. Tbf mine is 7 now and the years have seem to gone more quickly since he was 5 but still it seems like a different lifetime since I didn't have him /was pregnant

Ha! Agree op....my DD was 2 and half years old for about four years....

Yeah, I think the first year feels like ten.

What did go fast is when DDs got to secondary school. Primary school went on forever!

It's like when people say they feel 20 inside. I feel great, but very much 49 inside and out, and there is nothing wrong with that.

Weirdly, I think both. Mine are adults with school age children of their own and it simultaneously feels like the blink of an eye, but also like me being a young woman or a child myself happened to someone else entirely. I’ve been a mother longer than I was alive before I had kids.

Yes secondary school flies by!

I found the toddler years & primary school years felt endless (I actually loved them so it was great) but where it really speeds up is when they hit secondary school - those years fly by in minutes it seems.
Maybe because you are less involved day to day & there is soon a constant racing towards the endgame exams.

Now mine are more or less adults, it feels like their childhood has raced by although I also can't remember what life was like before they existed!

I agree. I remember finding the baby years soooo hard and I was surrounded by people telling me how fast it was going. It bloody wasn't!
I think it's when you look back, you feel like it's gone quickly. Mine are teenagers abd it really does feel like yesterday that they were cute little kids.

I feel like it can feel both.

Similarly, Covid to me feels like it both never happened and happened yesterday.

Yes to Covid - feels both ages ago/did it really happen but and also like it happened last year. Very odd

Covid feels like forever ago. The whole thing - pregnancy and having a baby and maternity leave feels like an age away.

I have had another child since and I do feel like the first year with her zoomed by though. So perhaps Covid artificially slowed everything down?

I think at the stage you’re at, you’re probably right - my kids felt like they were at nursery for decades before they went to school (more so my daughter who’s an autumn baby so effectively did an extra year).

But time since then has flown exponentially fast. My daughter has only been at secondary school for a heartbeat and yet she’s about to do her GCSEs.

It definitely all speeds up.
School is the start of that with term dates etc & then Secondary with exams just seems to go faster & faster.

It's absolutely a cliche but do enjoy & cherish the time when they are young.

Things change as they get older but it's not necessarily less complicated, the complications are just different.

I don’t think I don’t enjoy or cherish it but equally I’m not overly sentimental and I won’t apologise for not finding it all delightful. Some days are wonderful, some are awful. Most are both. Often before breakfast.

I agree that the preschool years stretched on indefinitely. Now they are teens if feels fast because physically they are morphing from children to adults and that change feels rapid.

Yes, sorry, hope I didn't come across as patronising and I am aware I am looking back with rose coloured glasses now because some of it was definitely awful!

But in answer to your first post - I think once you hit the school years it will start to speed up as it's constantly about looking ahead to the next term, holiday etc

I'm also not overly sentimental and would never want to go back to when my kids were small.
I think the key is to grow with your kids and enjoy what you can at each stage. x

I agree. My daughter is in year 1 and starting school did seem so speed everything up.

Her babyhood was simultaneously the longest year of my life and is also a time I can now barely remember. Time is so odd - I'm trying to practise mindfulness now that she is rapidly leaving early childhood behind.

I heard a phrase about parenting young children once that said “the days are long but the years short” and that sums it up for me! I cannot believe DS is going to be turning 3 in June, it’s flown, but simultaneously I can’t really remember what life was like before he came!

The years don’t feel particularly short though I suppose is the point!

I am not being negative - we’ve had wonderful times and also hard ones as I’d expect in a four and a half year period really.

I am actually a teacher too so not sure it’s the terms that make a difference!

I know what you mean, OP. We got our eldest's place yesterday and it's making me reflect a bit. I remember during pregnancy and then after she was born I was so keen for becoming a parent not to change me or the person I was before. With hindsight pre-children me would be devastated, because of course I have changed, hugely - but I'm very ok with it. So thinking back to the person I was in the before times feels like a very, very long time ago.

I think the sense of it having 'flown' is more because you're not stopping and taking stock every day. Realistically, when you have a baby/toddler (and especially if you then go on to have more), you're not stopping every day to soak up the experience - you're just cracking on with life. You're active, you're doing, you're not in reflection mode. So when you have 'seminal' days, like getting the school place etc, it's maybe the first time you've stopped for a while and thought more deeply about it. If you're only 'reflecting' once every year it's like you're only truly 'seeing' once a year - and then it's like meeting up with people you haven't seen in a while who express amazement about how much the kids have grown etc. I'd hazard a guess that it's that feeling people are referring to.

Sorry, that probably doesn't make the slightest bit of sense!

Anyway, my face looks significantly more than 5 years older compared to 'the before times' and that's probably the most definitive proof it hasn't flown!!

Only feels like yesterday my babies was sitting on my lap ones 22 soon and my youngest is 20 both moved out.
It was fun watching them grow-up but i really dont miss the baby toddler or school years much better when they become adults.
Nothing in this world would get me to go back to them days now at 38 im not old but i love my freedom.

Primary 7 years.
Secondary (in my area) 5 years.
6th form college 2 years.

Education wise things definitely speed up!

I think once your children are older and have left school etc, you look back and think it’s all gone in the blink of an eye.
I can’t believe how fast it seems to have gone (my children are in their 20’s now) but at the time it probably felt like forever!

One thing I can personally say is that it doesn’t bloody get easier!!! I’m still constantly worrying about them and their relationships/going for nights out etc etc etc! It just gets different!

The days are long but the years are short

Completely agree, I didn't feel like it went fast at all. I do however feel like school is going by fast (Y1), but I think that's because of the terms and holidays, and I feel like we've no sooner got one holiday juggle out of the way than it's nearly the next one.

My DC are adults and it feels both a long and short time, sometimes it feels like yesterday they were little and other times it feels like another life.