To hate sentimentality about the early years going fast?

[higlandcoo]

Everyone has a different perspective but for me they didn’t go fast at all. The year I had a three year old and a one year old was awful. I worked part time and absolutely dreaded my days ‘off.’

I hate being told I’ll miss it one day. No, I won’t. Life is already infinitely calmer and easier, although we’re not out of the woods yet.

I often feel like I’m the only one!

It's the same when folks tell me school was the best days of my life. It was not.
I like the baby days. Not enjoying 6 year old girls currently 😂

I don't hate it, but it wasn't how I felt. I enjoyed the early years, but I was always happy to see them progress onto the next stage. I'm the same now they are 17 and 20. Of course when they go to uni / leave home it's a bit sad and I miss them, but I'm excited for them! It's true that the years go by fast, but I've never felt sentimental or maudlin about it really.

I swear my DD was two and a half for about four years.

But it's a tricky one...the days are long but the years are short. It's bittersweet really....my DC are older teens now...life is easier in many ways but you do feel a bit wistful for those years. It doesn't feel at the time that it flies by when you're knackered but it really does.

I think it's very subjective. E.g. like a previous poster, I hated school (definitely not the best years of my life) but love the early years of raising babies and small children (not to say that it isn't bloody hard work!). We all experience motherhood differently (and your feelings, though different to mine, are 100% valid).

I follow an instagrammer who's daughter is 8. She is continually posting about how she absolutely doesn't want her to grow up. It's quite shocking how strongly she feels about it, but it stems from her neediness. The child still cries (as does the mother) on returns to school and some drop offs and she loves it.

Actually, now I’m in the GCSE years I’m definitely looking at the early years with a fond eye. Though usually I would agree with you, OP.

My dc are adults.

Its all gone very very fast. I’d love to go back to when they were about 5 or 6 tbh

The days are long, but the years are short.

I’ve spent the past week being sentimental about bringing my children up, about them being babies, the early years and having rowdy teenagers in the house, as my youngest left for uni. I know in reality the whole experience has been both good and very tough, but I am wearing rose coloured glasses. I adore them but I’m not what you’d call a natural mother, it has been very hard work. Now it’s over, I mean being so hands on, I will always wear those rose coloured glasses but I’ll know deep down that my time has returned and I intend on enjoying it.

The days go slowly, but the years go fast. I didn't like the early years much either and time definitely dragged through endless days of activities thrilling to a toddler, but less than stimulating to a grown woman. However, now they're in their 20s and 30s, I genuinely don't know where the years went, and I've realised that all that waiting for this or that to finish actually was my precious life slipping by.

I guarantee you will be sentimental eventually, just like everyone else. It's inevitable. It's more to do with mortality and getting old for me - it's scary to think it's been fifteen years since I had a baby and in the same time again I'll have a 30 year old. It's about perspective, time passing and such. When your tiny baby is 6 ft 1, you need to somehow reconcile the idea that they used to fit on one of your arms, you used to lift them into the bath, etc.

But you're not through it and far away enough from it to miss it, or know if you will miss it.
The baby/toddler years were tough for me on my own, but i do miss it.

I didn’t like the early years either, I started to relax when dd went to uni and DS was in S3. They were so much fun and had independent lives. I love parenting adults, love all their pals and their partners. People who lament the past irk me, I can’t get along with that mentality.

I should add that I bloody hated having a 1 and 3 year old, it was hell. Now, I miss it so intensely at times that I feel it in my gut. It makes no sense at all.

Totally disagree, mine are in their 20s and have never been sentimental about the early years.

Yanbu to feel how you want about your own experience, but not sure why you don't think I should be sentimental about my own. I loved it when DD was a toddler, it was such fun and she was so joyful. Now she's a young adult I feel very sentimental about how lovely those days were.

My personal pet hate is when people say: “You’ll never get the time back,” in response to a discussion about whether to work/not work with small children.

No shit, Sherlock. what are you supposed to do with that statement? Who could fail to know that you wont get the time back?

If you have to work, you have to work. Someone trotting out a patronising little homily to make you feel sad and guilty achieves nothing other than to make people feel sadder and guiltier.

You don't look back on photos and think they're ridiculously cute?

I think it's a matter of perspective -
I feel the opposite to you, love the baby years, feel they are too short, wish I could stop time but I also feel like the only one... all the parents around me seem to feel more like you, wanting to fast forward to an easier time when their kids are grown. So I feel like the odd one out for having my feelings.

No, I live in the moment. I’m very present focused.

Fair enough. I will add that I look back on photos, think they're ridiculously cute, feel nostalgic then remember that when the photo was taken I felt like a warmed up turd due to days of no sleep followed by hours of endless whining. So I'm not completely delusional.

As nostalgic as I feel, I don't agree with telling parents who are deep in it that they'll miss it or they won't get the time back. It's not fair. When you're going through it you're mostly just surviving, getting through the days. It's only with hindsight and perspective that you can see the bigger picture and realise it was a short time in a long life.

I have 5 children ranging in age from 27 down to 6 year old twins, if I could go back and do it all again I would.

I would have loved to have 5 - I only had 2 because I couldn't cope with pregnancy, the hormones really didn't agree with me. If I could have been given my own children at the age of 9 months I'd probably have had 10 of them! I am not nostalgic for the pregnancy and early baby stages, but I do love a squishy crawling baby.

I couldn't wait for mine to get bigger. I hated the early years.

I think the nostalgia is more about the changing relationship. Mine are more interested in friends now, whereas I used to be their world. I do miss that. Also the more they grow, the more I'm reminded how fast time goes by.

I think if I had a pound for every time someone has said the days are long but the years are short I could retire tomorrow.

I am obviously not saying this hasn’t got some truth in it as clearly it resonates with a lot of people but not for me. I’m convinced fucking light years have gone by since my first was born. It has not gone quickly in the slightest!