They say it takes 10,000 hours to become expert at something, which is 1 year, 1 month and 21 days without breaks. So am I a parenting expert now? Not quite.
Summary: I’ve clocked 10,000 hours of parenting and learned a few things: our emotional needs are the same(ish) at 1 vs 41 years old (validate me!), the only constant is change, and the best response isn’t avoiding the water but learning how to ride the waves 🏄♀️
My two biggest learnings from one year(ish) of the new parent life:
1. Understanding babies = understanding adults
Most information about parenting tiny humans equally applies to navigating adult life — like understanding our array of emotions, our need for validation, and taking care of our physical bodies to help our brains 🫂
I’ve gone deep learning about these things through parenting subreddits, audiobooks, and podcasts, and realised how relevant it is to all of us, really.
2. The learning is constant
Just as you become an expert in the current age of your child, it changes and you have to start again with the next wave of needs, challenges or development 🌊
So I might be an expert in how to ride the waves now, but still feeling like a beginner every day.
I’ve written a few other things about parenting lately, namely my takeaways from:
- The Whole Brain Child (book)
- Postpartum fashion advice from Beyond the Bump (podcast episode)
- Household division of labour from Expecting Better (podcast episode)
- Many, many subreddits
And how I’m using the 1 Second Everyday app to record tiny snippets of my cutie every day, to watch at the end of each year 🥹