When Good Advice Has Terrible Timing
If you’re a parent, you’ve heard it. Maybe from a friend whose children are now teenagers. Maybe from a grandparent watching the chaos unfold from the safety of hindsight. Maybe from a stranger in the supermarket who caught sight of your frazzled expression and decided what you really needed was a life lesson. “You’ll miss this,” they say, usually with a knowing smile that suggests they’ve unlocked some secret truth about parenting that the rest of us are still struggling to understand. The older Ruby gets, the more often I hear it. The funny thing is that I don’t actually disagree. I know I’ll miss parts of this stage. I already do. What frustrates me isn’t the statement itself. It’s the timing.
Nobody ever says, “You’ll miss this,” while your toddler is peacefully asleep on your chest. They don’t say it while you’re watching them learn a new skill or hearing them laugh so hard they snort. They don’t say it during those rare magical moments when everything feels calm and you can actually appreciate how quickly time is moving. No, they say it when you’re hanging on by a thread. They say it while you’re trying to cook dinner with a child attached to your leg. They say it when you’ve repeated the same sentence forty-three times and are beginning to question whether language itself has any real purpose. They say it while your toddler is climbing something they absolutely should not be climbing and you’re wondering if workplace safety inspectors take reports from exhausted mothers.
The thing about parenting is that two opposite things can be true at the same time. I can know I’ll miss this one day and still be completely over it today. I can love my daughter more than I thought it was possible to love another human being and still desperately need five uninterrupted minutes where nobody touches me. I can recognise that this season is fleeting while simultaneously counting down the minutes until bedtime. Somewhere along the way, we’ve created this idea that appreciating motherhood means enjoying every moment of it. As though frustration is evidence of ingratitude. As though exhaustion is proof we’re doing it wrong. But motherhood isn’t a highlight reel. It’s a life. And real life contains beautiful moments, difficult moments, and moments where you’re trying to explain to a two-year-old why Mickey Mouse does not require rescuing from inside the television.
“You can know you’ll miss this one day
and still be completely over it today.”
Missing the Baby I Couldn’t Wait to Grow
The strangest thing about motherhood is how quickly nostalgia starts showing up. Before I had Ruby, I assumed nostalgia was something that happened years later. I thought it belonged to parents of teenagers, empty nesters, and grandparents sorting through old photo albums. Nobody warned me that I’d be looking at baby photos before her second birthday and feeling emotional about a version of my daughter who disappeared only months ago. Nobody warned me that I would miss stages that I was desperate to leave while I was living them.
I miss what I call the tiny potato phase. The stage where Ruby mostly stayed where I put her. The stage where she looked impossibly small and spent most of her day sleeping, feeding, or staring into the distance like she was contemplating the mysteries of the universe. At the time, I was exhausted. There were bottles to wash, feeds to track, worries to carry, and all the normal fears that come with keeping a tiny human alive. Looking back now, though, I remember something else. I remember the predictability. I knew exactly how much milk she had consumed. I knew where she was. I knew that if she was hungry, tired, uncomfortable, or upset, the list of possible solutions was relatively short.
Toddlers are a completely different species. These days I can spend half an hour preparing a meal only to discover that Ruby has decided she isn’t interested in food. Or perhaps she is interested in food, but only one specific piece of food. Or perhaps she would like the food if it were presented on a different plate. Or perhaps she would like something entirely different that she lacks the vocabulary to explain. There are days when I look at a half-eaten piece of bread and think, “Well, at least something made it into her.” It feels absurd compared to those early months when every bottle offered clear evidence that she was fed, growing, and thriving.
And yet, if somebody had told me during those sleepless newborn nights that I would one day miss them, I probably would have rolled my eyes. Not because they were wrong, but because perspective often arrives long after the moment itself. That’s what makes the phrase “You’ll miss this” so complicated. It’s usually true. The problem is that truth doesn’t always feel helpful while you’re standing in the middle of the experience.
The Toddler Who Thinks Personal Space Is Optional
One of the biggest surprises of toddlerhood has been the touching. Not the cuddles. Not the hugs. Those are lovely. It’s the sheer volume of physical contact that nobody adequately prepares you for. Somewhere between babyhood and toddlerhood, Ruby decided that my body was no longer a separate entity. It became communal property. A public resource. A comfort item available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
Every morning begins with a cry-screaming sprint to the bathroom. If I dare attempt a solo toilet visit, you would think I had announced plans to move overseas. The only acceptable compromise is a toilet cuddle. So there I sit, beginning my day while comforting a distraught toddler whose greatest fear appears to be me disappearing behind a bathroom door for ninety seconds. Once the crisis has been resolved, we get breakfast and return to bed for snuggles. It’s actually one of my favourite parts of the day. Quiet, slow, and oddly sweet. The contradiction of motherhood is that the same child who makes me crave personal space is also the person I most enjoy sharing it with.
Of course, as the day progresses, the touching escalates. There are cuddles. There are requests to be carried. There are surprise hugs. There is the ongoing belief that my boobs exist primarily as sensory regulation devices. By lunchtime, I’ve usually been climbed on, leaned against, sat on, and used as emotional support furniture. Some days I genuinely feel like I’ve spent more time being touched than a celebrity at a red carpet event.
And yet, when Ruby falls asleep on me during a contact nap, something shifts. The constant movement stops. The grabbing drops from one hundred percent to perhaps six percent. The chaos pauses. For a little while I know exactly where she is, exactly how she feels, and exactly what she needs. She is warm, comfortable, safe, and loved. I am trapped beneath a sleeping toddler and unable to reach my drink, but somehow those are still the moments I know I’ll miss most.
The Furniture Is Lava
The thing nobody tells you about toddlers is that they seem fundamentally opposed to using objects for their intended purpose. Parks are a perfect example. Our local park contains actual climbing equipment. Proper climbing equipment. Equipment that was designed, engineered, tested, and installed specifically so children could climb on it safely. Ruby has looked at this equipment and collectively decided that it lacks vision.
Instead, she climbs the metal bench.
She climbs onto the picnic table.
She climbs onto things that were clearly never intended to support a small human. Sometimes I watch her surveying her surroundings and I can almost see the calculations happening inside her head. She isn’t looking for the safest option. She isn’t looking for the easiest option. She’s looking for the option that would cause her mother the highest possible level of concern.
At home, the situation is much the same. The computer desk has become less of a workstation and more of an extreme sports venue. I can be sitting quietly when suddenly I hear the unmistakable sounds of a toddler scaling furniture. Before I know it, Ruby has climbed onto the desk and is systematically launching items onto the floor. Pens. Notes. Random objects I forgot existed. Everything must go. Watching her work is like observing a very determined cat with excellent upper-body strength and absolutely no respect for office equipment.
The TV shelf remains her masterpiece. Not because she wants the television. Not because she’s trying to break anything. Quite the opposite, actually. She’s trying to hug the characters she loves. Mickey Mouse appears on the screen and suddenly my daughter becomes convinced that physical affection is required immediately. From her perspective, this makes perfect sense. If you love someone, you hug them. The fact that Mickey lives inside an electronic device and cannot be cuddled is merely a technical challenge to overcome. So there I stand, negotiating with a toddler balanced on a shelf while attempting to explain that Mickey Mouse is not trapped inside the television and does not require a rescue operation. If parenting has taught me anything, it’s that there are conversations you never imagine having until you have children.
“The problem isn’t that ‘You’ll miss this’ is wrong. It’s that nobody says it while your toddler is peacefully asleep on your chest.”
The Great Bottle Wall of 2026
One of Ruby’s current obsessions is empty soft drink bottles. Why? I have absolutely no idea. Toddlers don’t explain their artistic process. They simply wake up one morning and dedicate themselves entirely to something bizarre. In Ruby’s case, it is bottle architecture.
It started innocently enough. She would line them up neatly in rows. Then the rows became longer. Then the rows became walls. Then the walls became entire construction projects stretching across the kitchen floor. There was a certain logic to it all. A vision. A purpose known only to her. Looking at her concentration, you would think she was planning a major infrastructure project rather than arranging recycling.
The problem arose when these bottle walls began interfering with daily life. One day she built a particularly ambitious structure directly in front of the fridge and pantry. Unfortunately, these are locations I occasionally need access to if I wish to feed my family. Every time I stepped through the wall to retrieve something, Ruby would rebuild it. Every time I moved another bottle, she would return to repair the damage. It became less of a kitchen and more of a low-budget construction site.
Eventually she reached her limit. After watching me repeatedly destroy her masterpiece in pursuit of trivial goals like making lunch, she abandoned architecture altogether. The bottles were launched in every direction. The wall was no more. It was the shortest-lived civilisation in recorded history. One minute she was an urban planner. The next she was a natural disaster. Honestly, there are adult governments that have collapsed with less drama.
The Communication Gap Nobody Talks About
I think one of the hardest parts of toddlerhood is something people rarely discuss. Everyone talks about tantrums, sleep deprivation, and picky eating. Very few people talk about the strange limbo between understanding and communication.
When Ruby was a baby, I knew exactly what she needed most of the time. The options were limited. Hungry. Tired. Wet. Uncomfortable. There was a simplicity to it, even when it was exhausting. Now she has opinions, preferences, plans, and desires. She knows exactly what she wants. The problem is that she doesn’t always have the words to tell me.
That means there are moments where we are both frustrated for exactly the same reason. She knows what she’s trying to communicate. I don’t. She points. I guess. She becomes annoyed. I guess again. We continue this elaborate game until one of us accidentally stumbles across the correct answer. Sometimes I genuinely believe a single word could save an entire afternoon.
What makes it difficult is that I can see the frustration on her face. I know she’s trying. I know she isn’t being difficult. She’s simply trapped between knowing and expressing. The older she gets, the more I realise how much courage it takes to learn language. Imagine having complex thoughts and no reliable way to explain them. Imagine needing help but lacking the vocabulary to ask for it. Suddenly toddler behaviour starts making a lot more sense.
Of course, understanding the reason doesn’t magically remove the frustration. There are still days when we’re both exhausted by the process. But it does remind me that we’re on the same team. Neither of us is the enemy. We’re just two people trying to solve a puzzle together, one missing word at a time.
The Superpowers Nobody Warns You About
Before becoming a mother, I assumed parenting would teach me patience. I expected resilience. I even anticipated a certain level of multitasking. What I did not expect was the development of genuine superpowers.
One day Ruby was falling off the bed. In one hand I was carrying a plate of food. In the other, absolutely nothing useful. Without thinking, I caught her by the leg mid-fall while somehow keeping the plate perfectly level. No food was spilled. Nobody cried. The entire thing happened so quickly that I barely processed it myself. Afterwards I stood there wondering whether motherhood had secretly activated a part of my brain that had previously been dormant.
The reflexes parents develop are extraordinary. We hear suspicious silence from three rooms away. We recognise danger before it has fully formed. We can identify the sound of normal play versus the sound that means somebody is about to attempt something life-changing. Most of the time we aren’t even conscious of doing it. Years of vigilance simply rewire the system.
The frustrating part is that nobody puts these achievements on Mother’s Day cards. Nobody says, “Congratulations on preventing fourteen near-disasters this week.” Nobody applauds your ability to catch a falling toddler while preserving a plate of food. Yet these tiny acts of protection happen every day. Invisible victories that nobody notices because disaster didn’t occur.
Perhaps that’s motherhood in a nutshell. Spending years preventing catastrophes so successfully that nobody realises they almost happened in the first place.
Looking Back Through Different Eyes
One of the strangest things about motherhood is how quickly your perspective changes. Photos that once represented survival suddenly become precious memories. Moments that felt overwhelming at the time begin to soften around the edges. The details that consumed you start fading, while the feelings remain. I think that’s where a lot of the “You’ll miss this” crowd are coming from. They’re not remembering the exhaustion. They’re remembering the child.
I know this because I already do it myself.
Sometimes I’ll scroll through old photos of Ruby and find myself staring at pictures from stages that felt incredibly difficult while I was living them. There are photos from when she was tiny. Photos from the NICU. Photos from those early months when every day seemed to revolve around feeding schedules, sleep deprivation, and trying to convince myself I wasn’t completely out of my depth. Looking at those pictures now, I don’t immediately remember the stress. I see her little face. I see how small she was. I see moments I wish I could step back into for just a few minutes.
The NICU photos are probably the strangest. At the time, I was simply trying to get through each day. There wasn’t much room for nostalgia because we were too busy surviving. Looking back now, I sometimes catch myself wondering whether I appreciated enough of it. Whether I held onto certain moments tightly enough. Whether I could have done something better. I know that’s not entirely fair to the version of me who was living through it, but I suspect most parents have these conversations with themselves.
Perhaps that’s the real reason we miss things. Not because they were perfect, but because they’re finished. We can finally see the whole picture. We know how the story continues. The uncertainty has been removed. Looking back is always easier than living forward, which is why I try to remind myself that future Emma will probably look back at today’s chaos with the same soft focus. She won’t remember every tantrum. She’ll remember Ruby.
“Every season of parenting is hard.
Just when you think you’ve figured it out,
they level up and you’re back to scratching your head.”
The Guilt of Not Enjoying Every Moment
If there’s one thing modern parenting seems to be exceptionally good at, it’s making mothers feel guilty. No matter what you’re doing, somebody somewhere has an opinion about it. Too much screen time. Not enough screen time. Too much structure. Not enough structure. Too many snacks. Not enough vegetables. Every decision feels like it’s being measured against an impossible standard that nobody actually meets.
Then there’s the pressure to enjoy every stage.
The pressure to treasure every moment.
The pressure to be fully present and grateful and aware that time is flying.
Again, I understand where the advice comes from. Childhood does move quickly. One day your baby is sleeping on your chest and the next they’re rearranging your entire kitchen using empty soft drink bottles and sheer determination. But there is a huge difference between appreciating a season and enjoying every second of it.
Some days are hard.
Not because you don’t love your child.
Not because you’re ungrateful.
Not because you’re failing.
They’re hard because you’re tired. Because you’ve been touched constantly for twelve hours. Because you’ve repeated the same instruction twenty-seven times. Because your toddler is having a difficult day and you’re the safe person absorbing all of it. Human beings were never meant to function perfectly under endless pressure, yet mothers somehow convince themselves they should.
The truth is that loving your child and struggling with parenting can exist in the same space. In fact, I suspect they often do. Most mothers I know aren’t struggling because they don’t care. They’re struggling because they care deeply and they’re carrying more than anyone can see.
Every Season Has Its Own Hard
One thing I’ve definitely never been told is that parenting gets easier. Quite the opposite, actually. Every time Ruby reaches a new stage, somebody with an older child gives me a knowing smile, lets out a little laugh that sounds suspiciously like unresolved trauma, and says, “Just wait until…” before filling in the blank with whatever milestone is around the corner. Just wait until she walks. Just wait until she talks. Just wait until she’s three. Just wait until she starts school. Just wait until she’s a teenager. By now I’m half expecting someone to stop me in the supermarket when she’s forty-five and whisper, “Just wait until she retires.” It’s become one of those strange parenting traditions where everyone seems obligated to warn the next person that the ride isn’t slowing down any time soon.
The funny thing is, I don’t think they’re trying to scare us. I think they’re remembering their own child at that age and realising every season came with its own version of hard. The newborn days were exhausting in one way, the toddler years are exhausting in another, and I’m sure the stages still to come will bring challenges I can’t even imagine yet. Just when you think you’ve finally got your feet under you, your child grows, changes, develops a whole new personality, and you’re back to scratching your head wondering how someone so tiny can completely outsmart you before breakfast. Parenting doesn’t seem to get easier or harder so much as it keeps changing shape, asking something different of you every time you think you’ve finally worked it out.
Oddly enough, I find that reassuring. It means I’m not behind, I’m not missing some secret handbook, and I’m not the only mum making it up as she goes. Maybe none of us ever truly figure it out. Maybe we just love our children, adapt as best we can, laugh when we can, cry when we need to, and somehow stumble into the next season together. And if that’s true, then perhaps all those parents laughing and saying, “Just wait,” aren’t laughing at us at all. Perhaps they’re remembering that they once stood exactly where we are now, completely overwhelmed, completely in love, and completely convinced everyone else knew something they didn’t.
One Day
Sometimes I wonder what I’ll remember.
Will it be the endless touching? The negotiations over food? The million conversations about why furniture isn’t playground equipment? Probably not. Memory has a funny way of editing things. It quietly sands off the rough edges and hangs onto the bits that made your heart feel something.
I imagine Ruby as a teenager one day and I can already picture myself scrolling through old photos with tears in my eyes. I’ll probably stop on one where she’s carefully lining up soft drink bottles across the lounge room floor with complete concentration, or one where she’s asleep on my chest looking impossibly tiny, and I’ll wonder where that little girl disappeared to. Then, because life has a sense of humour, she’ll probably walk into the room asking if she can have her savings early and whether I think wearing that particular outfit in the middle of winter is really such a bad idea.
Maybe that’s enough for now. I don’t need to know which stage is harder or easier, and I don’t need somebody to promise me it’ll all make sense one day. Right now I have a little girl who thinks empty bottles are treasure, SuperKitties deserve hugs, and Mum can fix absolutely everything. That’s today’s story. Tomorrow will have its own. And somewhere in the middle of all of them, without me even noticing, I’m sure my heart will quietly decide which little moments to keep forever.
To the Mom Who Is Over It Today
If today has been hard, let it be hard. If you’ve been touched out, cried in the pantry, reheated the same coffee three times and spent most of the afternoon explaining why we don’t climb furniture or lick random objects, you’re in very good company. Loving your child doesn’t automatically make every moment enjoyable, and pretending otherwise only adds another layer of guilt to a job that’s already heavy enough. Some seasons of motherhood are exhausting, and admitting that doesn’t make you ungrateful. It makes you honest.
But somewhere in the middle of the chaos, try to find one tiny moment that’s just yours. Maybe it’s the way they carefully line up empty soft drink bottles as though they’re creating a masterpiece worthy of a museum. Maybe it’s the look on their face when they finally work something out, the way they absent-mindedly reach for your hand, or the sleepy weight of them on your chest before a contact nap. Maybe it’s the laugh that arrives out of nowhere and makes the whole room feel lighter for thirty seconds. You don’t have to love the entire day, but don’t let the whole day steal those little moments from you either.
I think that’s what people are trying to tell us when they say, “You’ll miss this.” Not the endless touching, the tantrums, the bottle walls across the kitchen or the impossible conversations with someone who knows exactly what they want but can’t quite tell you. You’ll miss the little person hidden inside all of that. The one who loves with their whole heart, finds wonder in ordinary things and believes you’re the safest place in the world. So on the hard days, don’t put pressure on yourself to treasure every second. Just look for one moment worth holding onto. One day you’ll look back and realise your heart quietly collected hundreds of them, even while you were convinced you were only surviving.
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