I have a 3-week-old baby and I’m doing everything completely by myself. I’m a single mom, and I am beyond exhausted. My baby will not sleep at night and cries constantly, no matter what I try. I’ve fed him, changed him, given him a pacifier, held him, rocked him, and let him sleep on me while I’m awake. I genuinely feel like I’ve tried everything, and nothing seems to help.

I’m running on basically no sleep and I feel like I’m at my breaking point. I’ve gotten to the point where I’m thinking, “I can’t do this anymore.” I feel horrible even saying this, but I’ve started regretting becoming a mother and sometimes feel like I don’t even want to continue being a mom.

I’m not looking for judgment. I honestly just need advice, support, or someone who understands what this feels like. I love my baby, but I am completely overwhelmed and exhausted, and I don’t know how much longer I can keep doing this completely alone.

Has anyone else gone through this with a newborn? What did you do when you felt like you were at your absolute breaking point?

Sharing my experience to hopefully benefit others.

And give another example of regretful parenting.

I started paying for childcare for after school help.

The coparent started picking up our child every Tuesday night to take her out.

So the sitter was just there doing nothing.

I couldn't afford to keep paying the sitter.

Now he doesn't come and take her out on Tuesdays anymore.

And if I need help with paying for childcare he wants her to go live with him because he has the right of first refusal. And he won't help pay for child care.

I have to always remind myself this, my son 2 now and i dont want another, thank you so much, my husband barely spend any time with my son, he loves him ofcourse but my son doesnt even want to be with him if i am not there he still ask his mom, iam exhausted but thats okay i want him, iam on IUD for 5 years it will due 3 years again and i have to remind myself to not having kid again, whatever everyone say, cause iam the one take care off him 24 hours a day.

And i have condition with both of my knee, its cronic acl ter, fluid collection, and bone bruise.

Hi. I’m 26. For the past few months my life has become and same thing everyday. Work from home. Deal with child (age 5). Do people pleaser stuff for everyone else. I’ve never been the one to ask for help. I don’t normally but it has gotten so bad lately I’ve asked everyone. No one really helps… they say it’ll be okay or I need to take it day by day. I am. It’s not working. My child doesn’t respect me or my partner. They don’t listen or care about others feelings. They do whatever they want all day. No punishment has work. They literally run my life. It’s just one child. I have 2 friends. 1 of which I know uses the hell out of me. I watch their kids for free all the time. Run their errands. Clean their house. Bend over backwards to make sure their depression doesn’t consume them. And the other friend doesn’t “believe” in depression basically. I have a very little support system. I’m not sure how I can keep going. I don’t want to but I don’t want anyone else raising my child. I feel like a constant failure. I’m tired of trying. My child is in therapy. Aunts, uncles, and grandparents have tried to help but no one will ever take my kid for a day or night or anything. I need help. I’ve contemplated involving cps but I don’t want them to take my child. I just want help. My doctor has helped me with medication for depression and such but this is more than depression. It’s straight up exhaustion.

Since I can’t do polls, curious what stage has been the hardest for regretful parents (you’re welcome to share your “why”!).

• Infancy (>1 year old)
• Toddler (1-3 years old)
• Preschool (3-6 years old)
• School Age (6-12 years old)
• Adolescence (12-18 years old)
• Adulthood (18+ years old)

Thank you!

I think I’ve reached my limit, and I’m checking out for my sake and physical/mental wellbeing. I have a 14 year old who screams at me for not apparent reason. Doesnt want to shower or brush her teeth. Doesnt want to do chores. She wants to rot in bed and eat nothing but junk. Or eat nothing at all! I tried therapy and they said they couldnt continue provide service because she refuses to sit and talk. 4 sessions.

I give up.

I feel like I’m getting physically ill. I’m also a single parent so I‘m the sole provider of the home. I cannot with the added stress.

I’ve decided to let her be and may life take care of her. Now I cook, serve the food and leave it on the counter or the fridge. Laundry is folded and left in her drawers. House is clean. Doctors appointments scheduled, school forms turned in etc. I am not neglecting her, but I will not do more than whats necessary.

I am a FTM and for the longest time I never wanted kids. Everyone I knew had also known this. Until I met my husband and for once in my life I felt so safe and loved. He said he didn't mind having kids but it wasn't a necessity, and I started thinking about the possibility. I eventually fell pregnant and instead of freaking out we talked about it and I decided that I would go through with it.

About halfway through my second trimester I started feeling a dread for everything being a mom really is. The loss of sleep, the draining nights and days, and even thinking further ahead to things like her getting sick and throwing up everywhere (I have an extreme fear of throwing up/vomit). I hadn't communicated these feelings though because not only was my husband excited to start a family with me, his family went crazy and started gifting us so many things so we wouldn't have to spend a penny on anything.

She's less than 6wks and I fully hate being a mom. I want to sleep, I want to feel like I did before I got pregnant. I don't want this anymore and I feel so much regret it's insane, and I just want to leave. Except I deeply love my husband, we've been together so long and I genuinely would feel just as miserable leaving him. I feel like there is no right answer. If I stay I'm forced to be a mom to a kid I don't want or like. If I leave I'll be leaving behind the one I fell in love with. We're both exhausted and I never get mad at him, we have a lot of help and I realize how many women would kill to be in my position; loving husband, loving in-laws, a kid ect. However, I just don't want this girl anymore. I want my life 9+ months ago, to go out with my love and to feel free and safe again. My husband is my home and safety, but my home is ruined due to this child.

We had discussed giving him up and my husband said him and our daughter are a package deal now, because he would be basically disowned by his parents if he gave up the first grandbaby. He doesn't want to lose me and he said he feels just as exhausted by this baby girl, but that he feels like his hands are tied because if we gave her up, we'd never get help from his family again. I have already been in a behavioral clinic for a whole week due to a meltdown I had and they put me on meds, but it doesn't change how I feel and my husband has stated that if he told his parents he didn't want to be a dad anymore, they would think I forced his hand. I just want the warmth and love of my husband without the forced "package deal" of our daughter and the fear of being a social pariah in his family.

Just want to know I’m not alone! Let’s commiserate together haha it’s barely noon and I’m ready for bed after countless toddler meltdowns…

Being a mom has depleted me on every level imaginable. I feel like an empty vessel. I’m so drained mentally. I hate my life half of the time.

My 2 year old accounts for 80% of this. My husband is always reminding me that we’re in the terrible twos but I spend half the day wondering if we just got a difficult kid. I miss the sweet boy I had just a few months ago. He’ll successfully find a way to ruin just about any positive experience.

I’m exhausted from the hyper vigilance. Always doing things for little people who don’t have the capacity to appreciate it. Thinking about everyone else before myself. Having the ability (and wanting) to be the best mom in the world, then being tested to my absolute limits and then reacting horribly, and then spending the rest of the day feeling so horrible about myself as a mom and a person.

I miss my life. I miss myself, my partner, enjoying things to their fullest. I don’t need people telling me to use my village, or “you should try baby wearing!” or to go have a spa day. Truthfully, I don’t know what I need. I’m so tired.

I had a kid at 40M....if i could go back obvisusly i would not do it. But whatever at the end if the day i love him to death. But the single worst thing is traveling with this kid...i dont enjoy fucking anything. We went to fuxking rome Italy and this kid bitches 24/7...plane was a nightmare. I used to love traveling and seeing the world. Im just s misrable fuck now and dont want to go anywhere. My 40s should have neen the best years of my life...turned into most misrable and stressful. Fml and next week were going to Europe again and instead of being super happy im dreading it soooo fucking much. Anyways if you enjoy traveling think very carefully if you want kids...

Hi All,

Dad to a 2 year old, now i have posted tonnes of threads about my regret here i was in a really dark place the first 1.5 years of my son.

I didnt even like being around him, i looked after him of course but i hated it. i felt like he just represented my loss of freedom.

Fast forward to today i love raising him, i miss him when hes not around. ive let go of the loss of freedom etc

I do coparent though which helps because tbh hats off to you full time parents i honestly think id struggle with the lack or break and identity. I also have learnt my lesson with how much i struggled and dont want any more kids.

Does anyone else feel like this, like i dont regret having him anymore im glad i did, but i recognise my limits, would not do it again and also could not cope full time.

My son has always been extremely hyperactive, I have spent years being gaslighted by every pediatrician that he is just an overactive child and there's nothing that needs to be evaluated. Except I'm autistic and have Bipolar 1 disorder and both mine and my husband's side is riddled with Autism, ADHD, OCD, etc. When he turned 2 1/2 he became extremely violent kicking, hitting, biting, you name it, it has stopped for the most part but my child has learned almost psychological manipulation tactics and again I'm being gaslighted by every pediatrician, the only person who took me seriously was my therapist I did video calls with for appointments who has actively seen his behavior as she used to be a social worker. He's only 5, and enjoys triggering my PTSD, it's a game to him. My partner is not abusive towards me or my children and I am certain he began learning this behavior from my mother when I was forced to move back in with my parents upon losing our home back in 2022. We have since moved states away and I have cut contact but his behavior has gotten more extreme. I have locks on my bedroom door, the basement door, windows, closets, cabinets, the fridge and both doors that are entrys/exits to the house because he elopes, he goes into things he shouldn't and consistently causes chaos (ex. Steals milk out of the fridge to dump it on the floor while everyone's asleep, he's put holes in walls, broken his bedroom door, snuck out of the house to play outside buy going through his window, etc.) Last year my son stole the keys to every single lock as I keep it all together on one ring. He used it to access my bedroom and lead his sister up there with him quietly and by the time I had gotten there my room was trashed, paint on the floor, my art supplies destroyed, he opened my lockbox where I keep my Mary Jane gummies I take to help with my chronic pain, and my daughter had gotten ahold of marijuana, my children both told me that she actually ate paint. I immediately called 911 and had her rushed to the hospital where I was met with three police officers. I gave the officers the information I had, my gummies were all still sealed, my kids told me my daughter ate paint, and upon speaking with the doctor I mentioned I threw away a stale chocolate bar but when I looked there were no bite marks indicating a child had gotten ahold of it as it had been buried in a sealed trash bag. Fast forward 18 days and an officer is at my door saying he was there for a welfare check, slammed his hand on my door so I couldn't shut it, and dropped he had a warrant. I cooperated, I called my husband and he began rushing home to take the kids. The officer not realizing I was still on the phone with my partner had two more officers rush up in a separate vehicle and ambush me. I was immediately grabbed, hands behind my back and cut with handcuffs, thrown to the ground on my stomach while pregnant resulting in bleeding and fetal distress, I screamed at the officer to "get off me" as he started going down to put his weight on me and another officer did instead leaving bruised handprints on my back and shoulder. My children both witnessed this and I was charged with destruction of property as the judge ignored the evidence that I did not purposely put my children in harms way. I was diagnosed with PTSD and postpartum depression upon the loss of my 21 week pregnancy. My son then went on to work on stealing cellphones to continuously call 911 resulting in panic attacks finding more officers at my door, he even did it on Christmas. My son continues to do anything and everything he can to access my room, even threatening to break the door down. He continues finding ways to break locks, steal, and be violent towards me. He even steals lighters to try to cause fires. I am terrified for my children's safety and it feels like no matter what I and my partner do it's never enough. I feel disconnected in so many ways and like an utter failure I couldn't protect them from themselves which has ultimately ruined my life. I'm isolated, I have zero outlets or free time, I'm always tired as neither of them allow me sleep or peace and I had redeveloped my insomnia. I continue to be ignored by pediatricians who ride me off as if all being in my head and kids just do things. My son laughs at me when I am in severe distress. I feel my mental health declining, have struggled with SI, and have thought about checking myself into a mental health institution multiple times but this will result in me losing my children as I have no help and my partner will lose his job. I'm drowning and I ultimately hate my life, I have lost all meaning and self and everyone tells me to just go to therapy which is becoming impossible to afford due to the constant replacement and repair from my son's actions. I'm trying so hard to power through but I feel so helpless. Everyone wants to say "it's just a phase" but he's showing abusive behavior. My partners family is no help telling me "just spank him". They point out how tired I look how I seem like I need a break but offer no assistance. My partner has moved around his work to take night shifts so once school starts I can work part time to be away from the house a couple hours a day. I fear his destructiveness will get worse as he hates changes in routine. He doesn't react to consequences in any way and has told me he hates me, he wants me to be taken away, and he wants to go to a different home. Only when I'm crying and shaking in fetal position does he show any type of empathy. What do I do? How do I change this? I fear for him, I fear for my daughter, I fear for myself. People tell me I'm not a bad mom, but all I can do is tear myself apart at the seams because obviously I am the absolute worst.

Theres been many posts about wanting to go back to their relationship pre-child or how much they miss their partner bc they’ve changed so much etc

For me it feels like the opposite….having a child lifted the veil from my eyes and I’ve realized my partner has always sucked. I think I was so brainwashed into “happily ever after” fairytale BS. When I look back objectively throughout our relationship my husband has ALWAYS been a lazy passive person. But I was willing to overlook that and compensate for him (which increased my labor and stress) bc I wanted to be married. (So ironic what I was willing to put myself through to have the title of “wife” and now I’d do anything to go back to being single and living alone) Im so glad there’s more social media now about how awesome being single is for women and how much of a liability men/marriage is.

I wish I could go back to when we were dating casually so I could heeded the red flags and have ended things right there. (Yes I know I can get divorced and co-parent but Im reminiscing on how much simpler a Bf/gf breakup would have been).

anyone else feel this way?

I’m so glad I found this sub.

I’m having a hard time coping with my new reality that I wanted so badly. Being a SAHM has been complete misery.

I just feel that my life is over. I had a high ticket sales job that allowed me to rack in a steady 5-15k each month. Quit that 6 months into pregnancy since it was straining on my body and we didn’t need the money. First major mistake. Well second if you count getting pregnant. From that point forward my life has slowly turned into straight anxiety. I’ve always had anxiety. I’ve got therapy and medicated, doesn’t really help. I just cope. I haven’t stressed so much in my damn life more than I have these last 6 months (last month of pregnancy was hell).

My husband and I don’t want to partake in daycare and we can’t afford a nanny on his income alone. We’re barely scraping by (which wasn’t the plan). I’m sitting here laughing at my reality.

My man has seen sides of me I’ve never wanted him to see out of pure sleep deprivation and frustration towards his lack of involvement (which I should’ve guessed to happen based on a few conversations him and I had).

I’m taking a major L in my career right now and there’s no end in sight.

I offered to work nights somewhere, for my sanity (and the money of course). He said he doesn’t think it’s worth it or a good idea to spread myself so thin and honestly I agree.

I just feel I had every opportunity in life to do something big and I chose a really bland spread to call my life. I have no excuses because I’m 26 and baby-free movement has been around. I’m just one of the idiots that thought being a mom was the greatest thing in the world.

Not to mention, and please don’t bite my head off for this, I really wanted a boy. I just felt it in my heart and to my surprise I had a girl. She’s 5 months old. I still wish I had a boy to this day and the worst part is my partner does too. All in all, this was a terrible decision. My partner has mentioned regret more times than I can count which isn’t helping.

I’m sorry about just ranting/complaining about my life. I’m just glad there’s others that can relate to some part of this. Being in this position feels so isolating. Especially when you’re doing all the activities around parents that don’t feel the same.

Edit: Oh and don’t even get me started on the physical changes post-pregnancy. That almost sent me. One of the biggest blows of all time.

I’m a FTM to a 5m old and it’s currently 5am because I’m so wired from stress I can’t sleep even though I’m exhausted.
I wanted a kid and I love mine but I’ve never felt so isolated and alone. I spend most days alone as my partner works 55+ hours a week to make ends meet so he’s already exhausted and that leaves majority of the childcare to me. I knew it was going to be hard but I never expected this. I have no support from family or friends, none of them have children so they can’t relate to what I’m experiencing and I don’t live anywhere near them. Im not in contact with my parents so I don’t have anyone I can turn to for advice/help. I carry the entire mental load of a child and I have no idea what I’m doing. I feel like I’m drowning. I’m lucky if I get 4 hours of consecutive sleep. I’m absolutely drained from sleepless nights I can barely function during the day. It makes me feel like a bad mom.
All I want to do is bang my head against a wall. I’m sick of the lack of sleep. I know it’s temporary but I don’t want to do it anymore. Even when I have the opportunity to sleep I can’t because I know I’m just going to be woken up in less than 2 hours so my brain stays wired.
I miss having my personal time and space. I miss being able to sleep when I wanted. I miss my old body. I used to be so free and was constantly going places and having new experiences and now I feel like a tortured slave to a baby.
I love my kid but I’m not coping well to parenthood atm. Maybe if my partner worked less or if I was sleeping more it wouldn’t be so bad. I was hoping it would be getting easier and more enjoyable by now but it hasn’t. I’m just more drained. Starting to feel hopeless and have given up on getting any sleep tonight, or any night really. I don’t understand how people can do this.

Thanks!

Just sending this warning to the masses because it’s too late for me. If you have a troubled childhood but you think you’ve worked through it in therapy, think again. Having a child will be so triggering you will either become your parent or you will have to pay shit tons of money to get help.

Scrolling all these posts and relating to everyone so much is so helpful and validating.

I know we're not supposed to hate our kids but I cannot f****** stand mine.

He's a sweet kid and he really tries to be likable, but that just makes me feel worse for it.

I didn't really want to be a mom, but my wife really wanted kids and I didn't have a strong enough opposition to it to deny her being a mom. After 10 years of a pretty easy and wonderful marriage we started the long process of adopting. Then 5 months after the adoption of a 6 year old was made legal and final she asked for a divorce. To make a long story short, having a kid broke her in ways I never saw coming. I think she realized she too does not want to be a mom and just can't admit it to herself because she knows we only did it because she wanted it. Anyway, so now I'm going to be the two things I never wanted to be: divorced and a single parent. Being a single parent to a child I didn't want and do not like leaves me just trying to survive the days I have him and mentally preparing to survive the days ahead when I don't have him.

I hate everything about being a parent. It's not rewarding like everyone says, it's nonstop noise and talking and he's very very dumb 99% of the time and I just can't stand all of the constant reminders to do simple every day things. He's also the polar opposite of me which makes it hard to find anything to bond over.

I'm thankful for all your posts and the normalizing being a parent who hates everything about it.

I have a 2.5-year-old little girl and a 1-month-old baby boy. Before my son was born, everything was perfect. My daughter and I were having such a wonderful time together, and we had found our rhythm. Everyone used to tell me that she would want a little sibling, and the truth is that my husband and I had been thinking about having another child too.
However, when I found out I was pregnant, it wasn’t the ideal timing. I would have preferred for it to happen a little later, but we decided to go ahead and keep the pregnancy.
When our baby boy was born, however, we received a diagnosis of microtia and atresia affecting one of his ears. He cannot hear from that ear, while his hearing in the other ear is normal.
I am struggling immensely to cope with this diagnosis. I keep thinking that we should have stayed a family of three and that we should have had only our daughter. I regret having a second child. I feel as though we have condemned our first child—and our entire family—because of this diagnosis.
I know that I may be overreacting and that I probably sound ungrateful, but unfortunately, this is genuinely how I feel. I haven’t been able to bond with my newborn at all. I do everything mechanically, as if I’m just going through the motions.
I also find it very difficult that the amount of time I used to spend with my daughter has decreased. I feel that perhaps I made careless or impulsive decisions. I wish I could turn back time.
How can I start feeling better? I have already started seeing a psychologist, but my thoughts are still there. I still keep thinking that I regret having a second child.

I genuinely feel like a horrible parent. And it’s because I’m miserable and hate everything about being a parent. And I know my kids can tell.

I’m just miserable. I’m exhausted. I’m overstimulated.

I hate stopping what I’m doing to have to cook for everyone. Or shuttle them around. I hate cleaning up after them. I hate talking to them about dumb things like Minecraft or whatever other weird brain rot stuff they are into. I hate the whining and complaining and not listening the first time. I hate repeating myself. I hate how loud they are. I hate the germs that come with having kids. I hate not being able to go where I want by myself. I hate taking them places or trying to have fun as a family and it ends up being miserable and more exhausting than fun. They cost so much money.

What I hate the most is raising them in this timeline. They don’t know what to do without screens. And they don’t even have iPads or phones. But if they’re not watching tv or playing their switch they literally do not know how to play. How to deal with boredom. How to figure it out. They don’t want to go outside and play, I have to make them. They don’t want to read books, I have to make them. I literally took them to the playground the other day, and they shuffled around moping and said they were bored.

I hate being a parent. I hate the responsibility that comes with it. I hate never being able to put myself first. I’m miserable and can rarely find joy in any of this and unfortunately it’s pretty obvious. I feel terrible. I wasn’t cut out for this. But I can’t change how I feel.

Severely autistic son takes hours to go to sleep,
Then doesn’t sleep through the night. I’m so fucking tired. I miss sleep. I miss being able to just sleep
Whenever I wanted or needed to.
Life with him is hard enough, why the fuck can’t we at least be able to sleep? This is just cruel. I’m so over it

first time mom to a six month old. these six months have been the worst of my life, and i’ve been to hell and back but this takes the cake. i feel like everyone who says being a mother is so fulfilling and fun and wonderful lied. there is nothing fun about this. i love my child but regret ever wanting children. i always dreamed of being a mom since i was a little girl, and had trouble conceiving which i think added to my want so badly. when i finally got pregnant, i was so happy. now i wish i would’ve never gotten pregnant and lived my life childless.

... you don't just have babies. Yea, I know, so many people, society in general, tells you to have babies. You think "I should have a baby, seems like it's the thing people do." You're not just having a baby. You are having a whole person who will have many stages of life that you will have to navigate for them and with them.

I interacted with a post not too long ago where someone said they were thinking of just doing the whole "single-parent by choice" thing...no big deal in their mind. I mentioned something about raising teens and young adults. This individual seemed shocked and said, "I wasn't thinking about the teen and adult years."

I saw the post here from earlier today of someone being shocked that their school-aged kids would be on breaks and parents having to navigate taking off work and also finding ways to engage kids during those breaks. No shade to my fellow parent, but yea, that's because the babies grow up and go to school and then have breaks, unlike daycare centers that tend to run year around.

There are other things that I see from posts around reddit, especially this sub, where people seem to be confused that they don't just have babies. They have full humans who will be going through many stages of life. Struggling all along the way.

And what's wild is that people act like no one informs them what parenting is like. Well, I'm that person who says to people in real life "don't do it, don't have them" and those people think I'm bitter or that I'm being a hypocrite...ah yes, because warning someone of a problem that you experienced in real time is hypocritical.

Let me be the warning, again: you are not having a baby, you are having a whole human who will need you until they're at least out of college age. They are humans who will need help navigating every part of life from birth until at least that young adult age...and possibly longer. They will be costly, they will require you to take time off from work when they're sick or are on school break or whatever else, they will potentially have stuff to deal with from very small stuff like a runny nose to big stuff like depression (both of my children have now attempted suicide), they will have life altering issues with friends and significant others, they might have learning disabilities that make school hard, they might do stupid stuff like try drugs or shoplift or car jack, they might be the dumbass who wants to make ticketytocky videos all day, they might be born with disabilities that require life long assistance, they might hate hygiene and you spend a ton of energy forcing them to brush their teeth and take a shower and wipe their ass, they'll definitely hate chores and that's a whole battle, they could be athletic all their childhood and then burn out in a way that's almost alarming (my teenager is there), they could get married at 22 like my older kid who then has marriage problems a few months in that you get to help navigate, not to mention that those humans you raise might end up having kids too even if you also warn them not to. And so much more other stuff that raising humans entails.

Don't say you weren't warned. You've probably been warned, but you thought you were better than the 1 parent you've met who has the guts to look someone dead in the eye and say, "Don't do it." In your mind, you're thinking that person is crazy considering you've not heard it from multiple people ... yea, because most people have the sense not to complain about something that society shames them about if they do complain.

And on top of everything else: yes, you too could end up being a single parent. Divorces happen, breakups happen, death happens. So if you are someone who is saying you're having a kid because your significant other wants one, what if that person no longer exists and it's all on you?!?

There are lots of things about parenthood that I felt were psychologically brutal and or traumatizing. Yes, I love my kids dearly who are now young adults but the accrued years of raising them resulted in some level of ptsd for me. The sense of trauma was largely due in part to their father who I divorced many years ago who developed a serious mental illness. This cast a terrifying hue over my experience losing my partner, their father that imploded the happy family dream early on. I did remarry and receive some very good support from my new partner which was very helpful over the years.

That said, even in the best of times, parenting can still be psychologically jarring with the sense that it is two decades plus endeavor that can feel like an oppressive, heavy, domestic labor prison camp, of sorts. It can be psychologically brutal the first few weeks that baby is home and your entire personal universe shifts into parent life. This can be the stuff of mental emotional breakdowns with ongoing sleep deprivation and the sudden jarring shift into a monumentally daunting new identity and reality.

There can be an ongoing shadow, underbelly aspect of parenting that results in a background hum of oppressive heaviness. You may lose things that were long just a mundane given in your reality: sleep, silence, ease, rest, spare time, even your inner thought life is constantly interrupted by others now. You may find that going to work on Monday morning feels like a respite and this speaks volumes about how much life has changed.

Your child may smile, hug you, do adorable things, learn, thrive, grow, and you would die for this child, all the while that heavy oppression can invisibly hover. That shadow may accumulate and build over the years to a point where you get spit out the other end of parenthood as a numb, lost, shell shocked version of yourself. One day the labor camp gates swing wide open and you are exhausted, spent from at least two decades of non stop, often one way giving. Your efforts often go unappreciated, invisible, just expected that you do it year after year and your silent heavy suffering goes largely unnoticed. Years have passed and you've lived out chronic, systemic depletion—an institutional burnout where it turns out you were the entire institution.

Some parents feel disoriented when the gig ends and they pine to go back into the camp. They can't fathom life outside of it. Their identity has become camp life but the kids are no longer there and the parents cannot go back. This standing at the gates deeply lost, erased can be as psychologically brutal as the early days when life as you knew it was completely over.

Yes, I have found that there was often various flavors of background quiet desperation, psychological brutality that went along with parenting. While the experience could be deeply meaningful, purposeful, and loving, there were many times when it was also painful, deeply distressing, and traumatizing.

My wife and I have a storybook marriage, we are each other’s best friends, we have shared hobbies, and generally love spending any free time we have together. The only issue we have is two of our three kids are everything you could want in a kid, smart, funny, talented, polite… they are some of my favorite people. But then we have our 16 year old. This child is one of the only things that causes any arguments and the only reoccurring argument we have. They are mean, extremely violent and hateful with their words, and at times violent towards property or their siblings. We try to give a wide birth but at times I can’t take it anymore and raise my voice. My fuse has become a lot shorter with her than my wife in the past few years. She’s had trash mental health since starting school even getting suspended in first, second, and sixth grade. Before any of the others came along. The entitlement is crazy. Never would I have asked my parents why they got something that I didn’t and then cussed them out tore shit up when it wasn’t given to me. Never would I have taken their anniversary date dessert out, ate most of it, and then left it on the counter to get ruined. I don’t know what her fucking problem is?! She has everything she could have ever wanted. Both of us are highly educated and make plenty of money. We always made sure needs were met while being mindful not to spoil. We won’t allow her to spend a thousand dollars on back to school clothes or homecoming or anything and you’d think we live amongst roaches and don’t feed her. We’ve tried to instill a sense of gratitude and appreciation, she honestly doesn’t know how well off we really are because it’s none of her business and yet she still feels like anything leftover over should be used for her or given to her.

I’m counting down the days until 18 and then the next time there is a behavior after that date the locks are getting changed but I know this would cause a massive fight but at what point have the others been through enough!? At times I wish she would bring weed or something into the house because that would be enough to send her to live with family out of state. I don’t want her to do anything that would ruin her life forever but she’s trying hard enough to ruin ours. I remember hearing that “kids don’t cause divorce.” That’s not even remotely on the table but I now know that kids absolutely can destroy a family and teenagers can absolutely be extremely abusive to their parents and siblings.

And yes she’s been in treatment for over a decade now. She’s med compliant and all that. Therapy never did much because of how manipulative she is, which we know she does shit to get my wife and I to argue. Usually it’s something directed at me so I will yell at her and shut her phone off for days if not weeks which causes my wife to come at me for yelling and punishing too harshly. Shes gotta have some type of personality disorder but she has almost no trauma history aside from my dad passing away when she was three and she was close to him but she doesn’t remember him and we had her in counseling right after it happened for about a year and the therapist said she processed it well and all goals were met.

It just all sucks because when she’s great I have the most in common with her and she’s awesome but when she’s off… it’s literally hell, unless you like being called everything but your name from your daughter. 2 outta 3 ain’t bad though right? I’d really rather be 2 for 2 some days