Nobody Warned Me About This: The Honest Truth About Parenting a Seven-Year-Old
I want to start with something that nobody told me before I became a parent.
Not the sleepless nights — everyone warns you about those. Not the financial reality — people mention that too. Not even the logistical chaos of keeping a small human alive and functioning on a daily basis.
What nobody warned me about was the emotional roller coaster. Though I should have read/listened to this.
The highest highs you have ever felt in your entire life, followed immediately — sometimes within the same hour — by the lowest lows. The overwhelming love that makes your chest feel like it might actually burst, followed by the very real and very valid realization that kids can be genuinely, spectacularly annoying.
Both things are true at the same time. Nobody puts that on a onesie.
The Morning Report
Here is what a morning looks like in our house.
My son is an early riser — always has been — so getting him up is not the challenge. The challenge is what happens in the first thirty seconds after he wakes up.
He wants his iPad/Chromebook.
We have a no screens before school rule. It does not always happen. I want to be transparent about that. We are human beings living real lives and some mornings the Chromebook wins and we move on without guilt.
But we try. Every morning we try. And some mornings we succeed and he eats breakfast and gets ready and we leave the house on time and I feel like an excellent parent.
Other mornings I find him under his blanket with the Chromebook at 6:47am and I make a different choice about which battle to fight today.
This is parenting. It is negotiation all the way down.
My Parenting Philosophy
Someone asked me recently to describe my parenting philosophy in one sentence.
“Even Louis Vuitton makes mistakes.”
That is it. That is the whole thing.
Mistakes will be made. You will raise your voice and feel guilty about it. You will make a decision you second guess immediately. You will have a moment where you handle something badly and lie awake thinking about it at 2am.
And that is okay. Dr. Becky Kennedy — for anyone not familiar, she is a clinical psychologist and the author of Good Inside, and she has genuinely changed how I think about parenting — would tell you that repair is where it’s at. You don’t have to be a perfect parent. You have to be a parent who repairs.
I raise my voice sometimes. I feel guilty. I repair. We move forward.
Even Louis Vuitton makes mistakes. The brand is still iconic.
The Part That Surprises Me Every Time
After everything — the Chromebook negotiations, the activity he didn’t want to attend, the screen time guilt, the emotional roller coaster that has no warning signs and no seatbelts —
He says something that makes me laugh so hard I forget everything else.
Every single day without fail there is a moment that is just pure joy. Pure, uncomplicated, unreasonable joy.
Nobody warned me about that part either.
I think that might be the whole point.
Gizmo supervised the writing of this post. She has never once been difficult in the morning.
