Look How Being a Father Has Changed Me

Every parent would admit that parenting takes so much effort and makes parents exhausted.

It’s true. Future dads and moms, be prepared to live with that.

I am not saying that becoming a parent will completely ruin one’s life. I can still see the positive changes that being a dad has given to me.

Before I became a dad, I found out some of my friends were slow to reply to my message, especially in the evening and during the weekends.

The answer is straightforward. They are taking care of their kids.

When parents are with their kids, it is true that they barely have time to do anything else. And so do I.

It is so easy for them to grab the wrong things or get stumbled when they are walking. Parents should always keep an eye on them and be alert to act when something goes wrong.

As a consequence, I become extremely focused when I am with my kid. I don’t have time to do anything else, like reply messages or email.

That kind of concentration also is introduced when I am working. A lot of time, I need to go back home as early as I can to take care of the kid, which forces me to become more efficient at work so that I don’t need to work overtime.

Procrastination will ruin my life if I don’t change.

The reason is clear. I need to compress much more things into the same amount of time in a day.

For example, after dinner, I like to take a break and watch TV for a little bit, then started to do the dishwashing. The sofa seemed like a black hole in my living room and tried to suck me in. It was easy to waste half an hour sitting there without thinking about doing dishwashing.

However, there is no way like that. Want to sit and watch TV alone? My kid will come in a second and grab the remote control and change the TV to a channel that I have never heard of.

The only way that I could find myself some free time is to finish chores first. If I delay my schedule, I would be trapped.

Got clothes to wash? Do it.

Need to feed the baby? Do it.

Play outside? Do it.

I could not wait until my daughter starts to cry and then get up from the sofa. Even though I can get some free time by neglecting my kid, I still could not do any meaningful thing. The only way I can sit down without distraction is to fulfill my daughter’s needs first.

Babies are creatures with enormous curiosity and good at learning new things. They like to touch and grab things that they have never seen before when they see them.

It is so easy to grab their curiosity and attention by giving them a cellphone (no baby can resist it I bet,) however, I barely let my daughter play my phone. The only time she can use it is when she needs to listen to her selected children’s songs.

To fulfill her curiosity, we need to replace the cellphone with other stuff, like

Book and toys.

The little started to read when she was only serval months old. The attention she gives to the book in her hands ranges from several minutes to twenty minutes.

My wife and I select the books she reads. We need to be the “Gate Keepers” at first, and moreover, the books nowadays are fun to read, even from an adult’s perspective.

Reading books with my kids is a process of learning and growing up together. By reading lots of children’s book, I even have learned many words that I don’t know, as well as some rare animals, poets.

Toys are also fun to plays with. Sometimes I even forget to touch my phone for more than half an hour just because I need to figure out how to set up a toy. It’s nice to regain my ability to focused, BTW.

I could not agree with the conclusion if I read it several years ago, because what I have learned from my friends, families is that raising a kid is like hell.

It is valid for some parts, but for the most part, raising a kid has offered me so much more happiness and serenity than I could imagine.

I also learned the research also claimed that the happiness level would decrease when the first kid becomes older or when a third kid comes to the family. But think about this, we can gain as much experience as we can to minimize the negative impact either situation might put on us in the future.

It’s so easy to neglect those positive things that raising a kid can give to us.

It’s so easy to get depressed when hard things linger above our head.

But when kids smile, you smile too. It’s so easy as well.

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