Children! How do they work?!

I think I mentioned last week how my friends have started having kids. Apart from the obvious problem of yet again pointing out that I’m growing up against my will, it means I have to deal with kids more and more often these days. Plus, I’m having to face up to the fact that I too, one day, will have them.

Children are baffling. They’re cute, and exciting, and have rather ‘interesting’ views on the world, but I just do not get them.

Weirdly enough, I’ve worked with kids in the past. I spent a year working in a children’s retreat centre, and another training to be a primary school teacher. After doing the practice at the end of the year, though, I realised just how horribly unsuitable I was for the job, and switched to studying Theology and Creative Writing. I got a useless degree but a whole generation of kids unknowingly dodged the bullet of possibly having me teach them.

I’m not saying I hate children, far from it. But I can’t help wondering how parents handle them. When I worked with them, at least they went back home after a while. When they’re your kids, you’re responsible for their well being and safety 24/7. Quite frankly, I find that frightening.

We’ve all been victim of the seemingly omnipresent screaming kid, whether it’s been in a restaurant, the cinema or the supermarket. I’m the first one to admit to being guilty of whinging about why their parents didn’t seem able to shut them up. Think about it, though. No one can keep children happy forever, they’re tiny, high strung beings, that seem to live on a knife edge and the slightest thing would set them off. Living with children must be like living with an unexploded bomb.

Newborn babies are the worst. They’re just plain terrifying. Have you ever been handed a newborn child? Whenever I’ve been given one I’ve been rooted to the spot in fear. What if I drop them? What if I hold them the wrong way? Just why are human babies just so helpless? I’ve heard from others that no new parent really knows what they’re doing when they take their baby home, which puts me off having kids even more. If they at least came with an instruction manual, like an iPod or something, I’d feel better about it.

This is only part of the reason why I’m rather scared of ever having kids myself. It’s just far too easy to do something wrong and mess them up for good. And what if I lost them? I can’t leave the house without having to run back in because I’ve forgotten my keys or my phone, I couldn’t be trusted to remember my children all the time too. They’d end up roaming Asda after I’d driven off without them, foraging through the fruit and veg section for nourishment.

It’s the idea of the responsibility that just turns me off. If that makes me sound selfish, then yup, I’m selfish. But what are you going to do? I take my hat off to anyone with kids, because quite frankly, I just don’t know how you do it. How do you take sole responsibility for a new human being, knowing that everything you do will have a lasting effect on them?

I’ll probably have children eventually, and when I’ll do I imagine I’ll look back on this and laugh at myself. ‘Oh you fool, you didn’t know at all, did you?’ Until then, I’ll just avoid thinking about it. At all costs.

-Friday Voni