I became a parent at a young age. Here are my observations:
1. Being a parent requires adult-like time management. Time management skills and focus are what separates adults from immature old people.
2. I have become a better manager and professional because of parenthood. Children really are your worst critics and often irrationally so.
3. The things I see childless adults do that I have never had the time or money for are things I have never missed and don't regret. I don't like clubbing and other vain social experiences and I don't drink. I did jump out of planes before having children and if I were interested in investing money in this I would force my children to do with me (regardless of what they want).
4. When I vacation hiking up a mountain is more fun when you can force a complaining child to do it.
5. You become really good at recognizing self-serving interests and immature behaviors in other adults, because you have had expert level practice from parenting children. Its like looking through a one-way mirror, because some people have no idea of their own behavior and how others around them interpret it. Sometimes those self-serving people have children of their own and its clear in the consequences of their parenting.
6. Children are expensive. I am absolutely not exaggerating when I say I have always wondered how childless adults don't have enough money to live in either a mansion, own a Ferrari, or at the very least be an investment millionaire off an average person's salary. After 4 military deployments I could easily live in a cardboard box (if not for spouse, children, and pets) and become a cash millionaire off my salary plus investments in about 7 years.
7. Children make you less portable. I have often thought of moving out to a highly secluded area even if it means getting by on next to nothing. Unfortunately, spouse and kids like money and suburbia. Most adults without children take this for granted and waste it.
8. Children are an unintended predictor of success. If you can convince a child to do it you should have absolutely no problem selling it to an adult for money. You sell something to a child by forcing it on them intentionally driving large amounts of bitching and crying only then to take it away from them. This is how I got them to be self-motivated about competition athletics.
1. Being a parent requires adult-like time management. Time management skills and focus are what separates adults from immature old people.
2. I have become a better manager and professional because of parenthood. Children really are your worst critics and often irrationally so.
3. The things I see childless adults do that I have never had the time or money for are things I have never missed and don't regret. I don't like clubbing and other vain social experiences and I don't drink. I did jump out of planes before having children and if I were interested in investing money in this I would force my children to do with me (regardless of what they want).
4. When I vacation hiking up a mountain is more fun when you can force a complaining child to do it.
5. You become really good at recognizing self-serving interests and immature behaviors in other adults, because you have had expert level practice from parenting children. Its like looking through a one-way mirror, because some people have no idea of their own behavior and how others around them interpret it. Sometimes those self-serving people have children of their own and its clear in the consequences of their parenting.
6. Children are expensive. I am absolutely not exaggerating when I say I have always wondered how childless adults don't have enough money to live in either a mansion, own a Ferrari, or at the very least be an investment millionaire off an average person's salary. After 4 military deployments I could easily live in a cardboard box (if not for spouse, children, and pets) and become a cash millionaire off my salary plus investments in about 7 years.
7. Children make you less portable. I have often thought of moving out to a highly secluded area even if it means getting by on next to nothing. Unfortunately, spouse and kids like money and suburbia. Most adults without children take this for granted and waste it.
8. Children are an unintended predictor of success. If you can convince a child to do it you should have absolutely no problem selling it to an adult for money. You sell something to a child by forcing it on them intentionally driving large amounts of bitching and crying only then to take it away from them. This is how I got them to be self-motivated about competition athletics.