This is me thinking out loud so, try not to judge me from my first sentence or paragraph.
Have you ever paused, perhaps in the quiet of the night after your children are finally asleep and wondered why parenting is so exhausting? I mean not just physically tiring, but mentally draining, emotionally consuming, and spiritually demanding. The kind of exhaustion that sleep alone cannot cure; it lingers in your bones and thoughts.
The truth is most of us began this parenting journey with little or no prior experience.
Yea, no orientation, no rehearsal, no compulsory training but one day, we were gifted a fragile human being and life said to us, “Here, nurture and lead this one.” How does anyone begin such a monumental journey without prior lessons? Come to think of it, isn’t that the very definition of life itself? Life is uncertain, unpredictable, and unapologetically demanding. Life, with all its loose ends and unanswered questions, rarely waits until we feel ready. Parenting is perhaps most vivid expression of life.
For some of us, we tried to prepare ahead, we read books before our baby arrived, after the baby arrived, and sometimes in the middle of parenting crises when desperation drove us to search for answers. Parenting books promised clarity, structure, and solutions. They offered frameworks, styles, theories, and strategies like gentle parenting, authoritative parenting, attachment parenting etc. Each book is confident, having persuasive voice. But the big questions that often run through my mind after reading such books is “how enlightened are you after reading one or two books? how many solutions truly fit your child, your home, your culture, your realities, and your emotional capacity on a bad day?”
Here is an uncomfortable truth – children do not read books written about them, they do not follow scripts, and they do not respond predictably. What works brilliantly for one child may fail miserably with another child even within the same household, raised by the same parents. So, Parenting can humble the most confident adult.
You may start with ideals like “I will never flog or inflict any pain on my child” “I will, never shout”, “I will always be patient”, “I will do better than my parents” and boooom, life happens, sleepless nights stretch into months, finances tighten, work pressures rise, personal dreams are postponed, and emotions are stretched thin. Suddenly, patience feels like a luxury and no longer a virtue. Still, the child looks up at you, watching, absorbing and learning.
The real weight of parenting does not lie in feeding, clothing, or educating children, but in you becoming a living curriculum for your children. Children do not primarily learn from what we say but they learn from who we are! Our tone becomes their inner voice,our reactions become their emotional blueprint, our unresolved wounds quietly leak into their lives. This realization alone is enough to exhaust any thoughtful parent.
Parenting forces us to confront ourselves, our anger, our fears, our biases, and our unhealed childhoods. A child’s tantrum can awaken our own suppressed frustrations, their defiance can mirror our unresolved struggles with authority, and their vulnerability exposes our deepest anxieties about failure and loss. No book truly prepares us for all of these.
Amid this exhaustion lies a profound beauty of parenting – it is not merely about raising our children but also about us being reshaped! Every stage of parenting stretches us, infancy teaches us sacrifice, toddlerhood tests our patience, adolescence demands our wisdom, and adulthood requires humility as we learn to let go. We grow as they grow, sometimes unwillingly and sometimes painfully.
The exhaustion comes not because we are failing, but because we are invested in loving our children and when it is real, it would cost us something. It demands our presence when we are tired, it demands us to be calm when provoked, and consistent when we could rather escape.
Parenting is exhausting because it is not a task, it is a lifelong relationship. One that evolves, challenges, and transforms us repeatedly.
So, if you are tired, you are not alone. If you feel unsure, you are not inadequate. If you question yourself often, it means you care deeply. This thing called Parenting was never meant to be easy but meant to be meaningful.