Do parents grow up with their children?

Written by the author Nikos Papageorgiou (book "When I grow up I'm going to be a dad")

Life before and after parenthood

Approaching 13 years as a father to Niki - my main inspiration for the book "When I grow up I will be a dad" - I look back many times looking for differences between the father PN (before Niki) and MN (after Niki).

Of course, the concept of "growing up with my daughter" has nothing to do with my biological makeup, but my maturation as a person, if I have changed my way of thinking and acting. So let me outline my findings on the aforementioned question, but focusing on the father's side. For questions about mothers, I refer you to my book, the article entitled "there is only one mother"! Although many of my conclusions apply to everyone.

Maturing and changing

So maturation, change, training or possibly a restart in some things. I would divide the changes I have noticed into 2 broad categories.

First, the changes due to... the arrival of a child.

I noticed to myself that certain things automatically went on a different footing when I became a dad. Like I was waiting for the right moment to say "time to get serious". Despite the fact that I became a father at 40, many things about my character were left in kid mode.

After all, isn't that what women say about us? "Men grow up to 7 then they just get taller"? Well, like that. Of course, fathers, in fact, we become children again to make our sprout laugh. I'm more referring to habits that are set aside.

For example, the third vodka that can prolong our hangover the next morning. Or strict adherence to speed limits due to the princess in the isofix "back". Or maybe take a look at that insurance program that we've been snubbing for several years. In general, the future and the sustainability of the company, sorry to the family I wanted to say, is now sitting round in the living room, next to the park with the dolls.

And we start a reengineering, a redesign, a restructuring of priorities and plans. Personally, within these contexts, I quit smoking as I describe in my book.

Second, on-the-job training.

Every day, every hour, every moment, living with the child is an experience, a new conclusion, a new... process. Especially the first child. Those who have more than one tell me that the second one they know what to do, the third one is "on automatic" and so on!

I don't know if it's true because I stopped at one. What I do know is that this path of learning is hard when you walk it, beautiful when you remember it with nostalgia. Every day an experience, every moment a new piece of information, for every mistake a lesson is recorded in our software and the tree of knowledge grows. And it is watered daily with laughter, with tears, with dreams and it grows tall and acquires shiny leaves and fruits.

So do parents grow up with their children? If this means the tree of knowledge as I described it, eh Yes! They grow up!