When Do You Feel Joy as a Parent, and Do Your Kids Know?

My daughter said the same thing and she is ten. She thinks it is soooo stressful and hard. She might not even marry.

Clearly my husband and I need to be friendlier and do fun stuff together.
We need to model happy and be happy.

I feel joy as a parent ALL the time... the good , the bad and the ugly.. :) I have always felt that since my son was born , my life has only gotten better and better. I relish all the moments we spend together... and yes, he knows it.. I tell him all the time how much I love him and how I won the jackpot in having him as my son.. As someone who came from a pretty dysfunctional background, I have always felt that my son has showed me how to love unconditionally (something I never had as a kid) and how it feels to truly and deeply love a person.. I mean, whenever I think of him, it just brings a smile to my face.... so not only do I feel joy as a parent every moment but as a person, a very blessed person.... I am smiling as I write this....

Ooof. That's a big question :)

Honestly. I think about this often. I see Mom's who seem so joyful with their kids (much like I was when I started out as a SAHM) but now my kids are older, and for me, it's so much more work than when they were babies. I'm looking forward a bit to when they are all just a bit more independent but now that they are 7, 5 and 3 I feel like it's harder than when they were 4, 2 and a baby... perhaps I've blocked out the hard stuff from those ages.

About once a week I make a resolution to myself to smile more, laugh more, and enjoy them more. And to make sure they see me doing it. But, I feel like I lose track of that goal pretty quickly.

For me, when my husband is home, I enjoy them more - just being able to make eye contact and share a smile when one of them does something silly (or stupid) makes it better for me. Maybe because he is so so busy at work during the week (he's always home and readily available on weekends) that I end up feeling like I'm just moving from one task to the next without stopping to smell the roses...

I feel more joy too when we are out of the house. When I'm home I look around and see all the chores I should be doing... it's better to just go out and do something fun.

I'll be watching this post. It's a great topic!

Yes, they know. But don't over-analyze your daughter's statement -- she's on the verge of being a teen.

You sound like a thoughtful, insightful mother, I'm sure you're doing a great job. Unless you hate being a mother, and have a terrible marriage, it's unlikely you are communicating anything negative to your daughter.

Have you asked her why she's crying over this topic?

The things that make me feel more are really the intangibles. For me, being a stay at home mom is less about being Suzy Homemaker and more about building and strengthening the relationships in our family.

I wanted more than anything for my kids to be friends. I wanted to know that, when I am old and they have their own families, that they will have each other and a bond that keeps them close even if they end up far apart.

I wanted my kids to feel that they could talk to us about anything...even if it might make me uncomfortable or I might have a moment of shock. It was important to me that THEY didn't feel uncomfortable.

I wanted to build them up as individuals. I wanted them to feel confident and secure. I wanted them to feel their potential and feel that they could realize it.

I wanted them to know how to love others. I wanted them to feel an obligation to help their fellow man.

So, to answer your question (finally). What brings me joy is seeing my older boys laughing and joking with each other. What brings me joy is seeing them stand up and defend each other, comfort each other, advise each other, guide each other and play with each other. What brings me joy is seeing them do what they think is right even when they don't know I'm not watching. What brings me joy is seeing them find a passion and do what they love. What brings me joy is seeing them try new things.

And, yeah, I try to tell them all the time.

Just got off the phone with the daycare provider. She told me that our boy has a winning smile and a coy way about him. On the days that he doesn't attend, she and the other teachers miss having him around, and that he's a joy to have around. I feel joy in my child often, I feel joy in the challenges of parenting, I beamed on the inside after that phone call.

Children are a biological consequence of unprotected sex, a long road of TTC, or fostering or adoption. Parenting, and taking joy therefrom, is a daily devotion.

Good luck to you and yours,
F. B.

I am the oldest of five kids...all are much younger than I am closes is 7 yrs. I felt like a built in babysitter. As a teen I would get "oh your baby is so cute" then hear "such a shame she has a baby so young". They weren't my kids, damn it! But I could tell people they weren't til I was blue in the face.

I swore up and down from the time I was in Jr. High that I was not going to have kids nor get married. Still said it the day I turned 25! I was happy with where my life was.

6 months later...girl meets most incredible boy she's ever met! That was 10 years ago, one common law marriage, one huge tadoo wedding, and two kids later. I am happy and yes I tell them any chance I get...how happy the three of them have made me.

Do I love being a mom? ask me tomorrow...but today YES! Is is just because I love them? YES.

I feel joy when they do, I feel it when I see them finally "get" whatever it is they are doing...math, soccer, spelling, abc's.

Most days I ask them "Do you know who makes me happy?"...and they will say "MOOOOM...we know we do"..."Do you know why?"..."yeah cause we're fun!"

ETA: I am a different kind of mom than mine was/is. She was not a terrible mom, she was not a great mom. She is my mom...but I am not her. There are things she did that I will never forget good and bad...I'm sure my kids will same the same about me one day. She did the best she could and I am doing the best I can.

For me, motherhood is a lot less of a fairytale experience than I envisioned, as was my career and also my marriage. Don't get me wrong, I'm not an unhappy person. Quite the contrary. I've just had to make a lot of adjustments in my expectations. And I've learned to be happy knowing that one thing is certain: Life is hard. With that I am able to enjoy motherhood, because I accept at one point one of them will damage my furniture, spill a whole bowl of cereal on my rug, cost me way too much money, and rob me of my peace and quite time, and even stop me from reaching some personal goals and achievements. I am able to love being a mom because i accept its part of my life that is hard. Mine are too little for me to know if any of it is sinking in but I tell them weekly "I love being your mom. I love to hold you, hug you, feed you, wipe your butt and kiss your boo boos." My mom loved being a mother, and it is one of the reasons I never hesitated to want to have kids. I want to give that my my kids too.

I was never going to get married and have kids. I was going to live the big life of an independent woman of the 90s! As it turns out, I got to do that for most of the 90s, and then, in 99, I met my hubby. Nothing else was as important to me as him, and then having kids.

I love my kids, and I love being a mom (most of the time). I'm in a rough spot right now. I'm struggling to find the joy...I even took them to the Zoo the other day thinking we could have a super fun adventure. It was a nightmare. The 4 year old is just being such a stubborn uncooperative teenager, and the 2 year old is great until he gets tired..and then all hell breaks out. His "med does" are cute, until he insists on it and we are in a hurry.

I feel joy with my kids when we are just having fun together. We were singing songs on the way to the Zoo...that was great fun.

I don't think you need to tell them when you are happy. They know. Kids have amazing radars for knowing our moods.

Good question. I love my kids but to say I love being a parent is hard to say. Parenting is hard work and never ending but IMO the outcome outweighs all the work, time and energy that goes in to it. I get complete joy out of watching my kids do anything that makes them happy or proud of themselves. Getting good grades, learning something new, playing a new game or finding a new friend. And yes, they are fully aware of when I am happy and/or proud of them. We make sure to tell them daily.

My Joy as a parent comes in small moments - when I am talking to my boys, when I was rocking them or singing, watching first steps, encouraging. I am very vocal. I don't want my children to have to guess or infer if I am happy and joyful in the moment. I tell them so they know (my husband too!)

and while I am thankful all the time, I think anyone who says they are joyful all of the time, 100% 24/365 is either on meds or has selective memory:) LOL!

You can definitely separate loving your kids from loving being a mother. They are two separate things. Twelve years old is young but it better for her to know what she wants and doesn't want for her life afterall it is her life. My best friend NEVER wanted children and doesn't have any. That is great for her because she is too self absorbed to be a particularly great mom. There is something inherently selfless about being a great mom. To be a great mom you don't have to give up your life for forever but there are times and seasons and years where your life becomes the back burner and you have to learn again how to become just a little more selfish and a little more self absorbed as they grow older so they don't believe the entire world revolves around them. For example: If the family schedule revolves around the activities of the kids, like who needs to be dropped off and or picked up from this or that practice it may be time to make some modifications that include you the mom's passions and desires for life and living. I hope that makes sense.

My oldest neice doesn't want any children which is great because again she is just too self absorbed to think more highly of another person than herself. I think she could possibly be a disaster as a mom. She really is that absorbed into her own world and her own things and what SHE wants.

My 3rd oldest neice has 1 daughter but wasn't ready to be a mom but she is working that out as she raises her daughter. Her daughter will be 3 soon and is smart and cute and wonderful. Doesn't mean the kid doesn't have problems but what 2 almost 3 year old doesn't have problems. She is learning how to grow up and so is her mom. Her mom is learning to love being her daughter's mother. Her daughter is a lovely baby. I adore her.

I love being a mom. I will mother anything that will let me mother it. My husband has to remind me constantly that our goal as parents is to get the kids out of the house and not bring more kids in. LOL.

Relax, life isn't a sprint but a marathon. We often have goals for ourselves as children that aren't realistic and aren't even met. Enjoy every stage and phase of their development and yours too.

If you want your kids to want to be married and have a family, then you need to show them, not just tell them that marriage and family is a wonderful thing.

I was so glad to move out of southern California and its smog problems of the early 70's that I always refered to S Cal as "Smog Valley USA". I ruined it for my kids when they finally cleaned up most of the smog and made it a reasonable place to live. I showed them by example the wrong thing.

My wife and I were married on the 28th of July. We made it a game to see who could tell the other "Happy Anniversary" first on the 28th of each month. It made it special for us and it made an impression on each of our kids. Six of our 8 kids got married on the 28th of the month. My 7th even came to my wife and I and asked if he could marry his girlfriend on our anniversary. That made it real special to my wife and I. I wrote love poems to my wife and gave her flowers each month. And sometimes twice or three times per month. My kids saw this. I always opened the car door and building door for my wife. My kids learned what a happy marriage was and all of them are in happy marriages because of our example and our standards.

If you want your kids to do something, do it well yourself. I never sent my kids to church. I took them to church. I was never the "one hour christian" where I lived my religion while the pastor was speaking and then did anything I wanted the rest of the week.

If you want to change your daughter's view of marriage and child raising, then live the example. Encourage your husband to give you flowers. Live the life of a devoted wife and show how much fun marriage can be. Ask your husband to live the life of a devoted husband. Tell your husband you love him in front of the kids. Have him tell you he loves you in front of the kids. Never mention the bad side of being married.

Get the book, "The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands". If you can get past the title, you will learn a lot about men. Then give it to your husband so he can learn a lot about women. He the movie, "Fireproof" and watch it with your husband. Then get its companion manual, "The Love Dare" and follow what it tells you. I've been doing the Love Dare for the past 39 years. And inspite of some rough places, it has paid off.

Live the example and they will learn and do. Good luck to you and yours.

i understand your question, so i won't write a lengthy response. i do love my kids, and because i love my kids so much i do the things i do that are expected and normal of motherhood. but i don't like motherhood per say. 60-70 per cent of the time, is not fun stuff, it's chores, cooking, cleaning, feeding, doing laundry, baths, choosing clothes, homework, studying for tests. do i hear myself saying: yupiii my kids have a science test on friday, can't wait to study with them!!!! nope. but i sit my butt down, and go through chapters with them. i make up my own tests to see how prepared are they for the test. i do it because i care about them, i want them to succeed and be the best they can be. not because it makes me happy.
30-40 per cent of the time, i love motherhood. having conversations with them. teaching them about life, places, people. talking to them about the past and the future. doing their hair. going shopping with them. exploring new places, new countries. watching a movie with them. THOSE i love. sadly, we cannot do those every day.
if my kids say i don't want to become a mom, or get married i would smile and say whatever you want. and i mean it. if they don't want to make the sacrifices one makes once we become moms, why would i push them to do it? would i say, i will die happy because i was a mom? i would probably die happy even if i hadn't become a mom. happiness comes in different forms, from different lives, different choices. we just make the best we can with what we have chosen.

For a very long time (actually, starting at about 12)... I determined to never get married, and to never have kids.

Why?

Because I wanted to have adventures.
Because in books, they all ENDED with 'happily ever after'.
In stories, everyone ELSE got to have fun, while mom was the voice of reason (or dead, or cleaning, or whatever).
Because I saw my mum... who was/is a brilliant woman (microbiologist, RN, voracious reader, held her own & became close friends with some of the best minds of our time)... doing "nothing" with her skills and talents.

I couldn't see that all of the brilliant people she befriended, liked her for who she was and her mind. All I saw was that she wasn't "using" her mind, the way her friends were with their jobs.

I couldn't see that she was still pursuing all of her passions, and dreams, and interests... just on her own recognizance... instead of on a company's time sheet.

I couldn't see that she was exactly who she wanted to be.

Instead... I saw all that she "wasn't".

And that terrified me. I could very EASILY see everything that *I* wasn't.

Ditto... there's a lot out there about "sacrificing for your kids", and "giving up the dreams of childhood", and "giving it all up to raise your kids", etc. on TOP of all the fictional works out there (that really do end with either marriage or motherhood).

Fortunately, I was able to come to know my mum for who she really is after only leaving home for about a year (amazing how working full time accomplishes everything that fiction does with 'marriage and children'... aka not having the TIME to pursue all my hopes and dreams, all of a sudden cast my mothers voracious self employment (old term, meaning how one employs one's house... not self employment the job), vivacity, and love of life into a new light.

Before, I saw all she wasn't.
A year on my own let me see MOST of what she WAS.

__________

When I feel joy as a parent, does my son know? SOMETIMES :) :) :) Because he doesn't get why I chuckle when he's stomping off in high dudgeon. He knows I love being a mom, and love being HIS mom most of all.

But then, I knew that as a kid with my mum as well. I just felt she'd wasted her life with us... until I turned that premise on it's head.

_________

Something I very much wish, is that I'd been taught WHY one dates, and similarly HOW to go about the business of choosing someone to marry. I'm headstrong enough that I may very well not have listened... but it was something that was never broached in my childhood. You dated, because that's what people did. To fall in love, right? And if you fall in love you get married, right? SO much more to it. But that's what's on TV... and everyone in my family was already married (and great marriages that are 30, 40, 50+ years on). I was so dead set against marriage and kids as a teen, that I really might not have listened. But, then again, I may have changed my views as marriage being a death sentence if I'd had everything laid out.

Shrug.

No telling! :)

Although... and I could be wrong... but I THINK that by the time we were preteens/teens... the focus was so much on SEX that the topic of marriage got sidelined. Sex, sex, sex. Wait. Use protection. Wait. Use protection. Etc. Adults were so hyped up about our sex ed, that we never really got "dating ed", much less "marriage ed". So we had very 2 dimensional disney ideas surrounding dating and marriage.

In my case... that led to my adamant "Not gonna do it!" and one of my sister's went all "True Love" nuts (with no practicality, literally wated for years for prince charming), etc.

Being a parent is like all projects: you toil at the kitchen at Thanksgiving, at the garden or the treehouse you thought would be great building from scratch. Sometimes you hate the job and just want to relax. Most times you tally on and like Thanksgiving dinner, your grand feast may fall short as you realize you can't make it all but you pick and choose your battles or the treehouse has one less rooms. Oh well, you tried your best and at the end when you see everyone happy at the table or you harvest your vegetables or you see the gleaming in your children's eyes when they first climb those steps ... you feel happy.

Being a parent is like that. Yes, it's hard, yes, you sometimes want to run away and ,yes, people wonder if you really are enjoying yourself over the cursing and yelling but in the end, it's so satisfying the end product that you forget you nailed your finger a few weeks back.

I feel joy as a parent when they do something or say something that just makes you smile at the wonder that is life.

I hide my dissatisfaction (maybe 15%) because it does not pertain to her. It pertains to circumstances. I love travel and I love spontaneity. A little tough as a single mom.

I really never thought I would love being a mom so much and the joy has taken me by surprise. She knows I find joy in her: we have a blast being silly, singing, laughing, talking, snuggling, etc.

My own mom, while we're close, is not necessarily fun-loving. Maybe that's why the joy has taken me by surprise.

I'm sorry you never got that conversation with your mom. It could very well be that the person who said that may have witnessed a moment or had an incomplete picture of your mom's feelings.

When my older daughter was 12 she swore she would never have kids. The reason was simple, she had a three year old brother and a one year old sister. Birth control poster children if you will. I was pretty sure I never wanted to have any more kids either.

She is 22 now and trying to decide if she wants four or six kids, maybe eight! It is part of growing up and it will pass. You would be unwise to make a big deal about it.

Pretty much they are at a point where they can realistically look at how much responsibility a child is. I would also like to think that anyone at the age of 12, with any common sense, would realize that is a heck of a lot more than they can handle. As they grow they mature and develop the abilities that will make them a responsible adult. Then they look back and wonder why they thought that.

I do love being a mom. I love the sanctity of our family and the bond we have. I don't love every part of it. I really came to appreciate how much I loved being a mom this summer when my kids spent 2 months with their dad. I missed them terribly, but I also missed being a mom. I missed sitting around the counter talking about plans for the day and seeing their faces.

About two weeks before they came home, they started calling me a LOT more to check in. They started planning time with friends and calling me for permission. That made me feel like their mom again. Granted, there are many different ways to be a mom, but for me I was the "go to" parent for schedules and events and I truly missed that.

There are days that I tell them (jokingly) that I love them only because I'm legally obligated to do so. It always lightens the challenging moment and makes them laugh.

There are reasons doctors don't do sterilization on young adults - they are too young to make the decision to NEVER have children. Your daughter isn't rejecting your choices. She just sees a different path for herself at this time. She's 12. Things are in and out and kids are a lot of work. I don't think anyone can ever truly understand the sacrifices, emotional challenge and just plain hard work that parenthood is until they're in it.

Hi, this question raised huge question for me... Thank you.. Well I too said these words to my mom, as she looked tooo stressful, tired, working and never seemed happy. Now I got to know the happiness when we have kids, even though nothing is right in my life. I am happy because I have him, ( my son). But kids wants us to show them that we are happy, I mean everything, like marriage, work, and everything.... If They find everything is good, and regarding their sensors, they r tooooooo sharp right. My kid was just 2 at that time, when he finds me sad, he comes and gives me kiss, that is his way of comforting me, now he is nearly 3 still continues, but timings reduced because I never showed my sad moments to him... And he is very happy kid but bratty though... From my childhood experience I am making sure he never sees me sad.... Please remember They will never forget our sad faces. When I see him happy nothing seems bad... This is my joy.... One more thing.... OUR JOY IS THEIR JOY... I learned so much from my childhood... Speak to her, if she found anything stressfull... to be MOM.

I love your questions and it really caught my eye as those are questions that are really important. and I have been questioning what it is I like about being a mom and what I struggle dealing with. I show my children that I love them, but hmmmm, do I show JOY when doing mom things? not so sure.

As for your daughter, she is only 12, and her feelings will change (again and again) over time.