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While our daughter was eating an evening snack before bed, my wife was showing videos from when she was a baby between the age of maybe one and a half, and two years of age. Parents are generally pretty proud of their kids achievements and for first time parents, everything she did was amazing - whether it actually was or wasn't, that didn't matter to us. Our daughter has a gift for languages and started talking early, with her first word at eleven months. 

![image.png](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/tarazkp/23y8wsr3c4fn4b1q6mF7s75YasSkDAW4cWBXk2DgW16iZyTxbHePYHa56hyFYp4Gj1axC.png)

> At this point I will highlight her first word was, *Daddy.* 

But while everything was special and amazing at the time, looking back at the videos, in hindsight - she was pretty amazing. She is there at one and a half speaking in both Finnish and English, depending on her audience, counting things from her books, and making intentional jokes to be a smartass. She was a pretty talented little kid. 

But it is funny as we watched, as while our daughter likes watching them, it is almost like she is watching someone else, as she has zero recollection of any of this today. She knows it is her, she sees familiar things, but the activity itself is no longer in her memory. It is like watching footage after a very, very drunken night. 

>Not that I would know about that.... because unfortunately I have never been able to get drunk enough to not remember. Just drunk enough to do stupid things. 

And a bit like seeing that replay, our daughter was still kind of embarrassed that it was her, saying things in a baby voice, blowing kisses by slapping her face, and demonstrating how to get on and off a step stool in great detail. And it is interesting, because when I look back I am still amazed, yet when she looks back, all she sees are the flaws and immaturity. 

> Having kids is awesome. 

I was reading an article where some Gen-Z "celebrity" was saying how she doesn't know anyone happy parent, but I don't think that is a fair appraisal. Because yes, having kids can be difficult, and yes, it means that a lot of the things that were previously enjoyed get missed out on - but it doesn't take into account all the additional experiences that can be had without children. But more importantly than that, it doesn't take into account that having children isn't a phase in life like going to school, or having a summer job, it is for life. 

The relationship is always there, and it changes over time drastically. The experience of being a parent isn't a static experience, it is a wildly variable one, where things change massively over time. While the child is always a child in the eyes of the parent, the parent still has to come to terms with them changing into whoever they will be as an adult, whilst still remembering that they changed that adult's nappies, comforted them when sick, put a bandaid on a grazed knee, and watched as they have their heart broken by a person you knew would break their heart. 

The entire dynamic of the relationship changes over time, but it is also a relationship that is consistent throughout life too. There is always a parent-child connection. And, I think that this is why so many much older people who chose to pass up having children, often regret their decisions when much younger, because they didn't factor in how they would feel about it in the future. 

>How can we? 

We are *terrible* and considering how our future self is going to feel about something, so we make decisions based on what we know, without thinking about *what our future self will know.* If you ask most parents if they regret having kids, they don't say no because they can't put them back, they don't regret because they now know things they didn't earlier. Looking forward, it is hard to imagine this, because unless experiencing it directly, it is probably impossible to truly understand.

Just like when my daughter looks back at herself as a baby, and doesn't see how she could be so silly, even though she was *very clever* for her age. We don't know what we are going to know in the future, and we definitely don't know how we are going to feel about our past and the decisions we made in the future. 

>We are always immature in the present.

But if we are going to be kind to our future self, we are going to have to consider that the things that future me is going to value and find important, isn't going to be the same as the things that present me finds important. A lot of people these days seem to be going all-in on their current feelings, without putting anything aside for their possible future feelings. It is like someone who has nothing put away for a rainy day, assuming it will always be sunny. 

Kids don't have to be gifted.
They just need to feel loved. 
It's the same with adults. 


Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]

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