Tired? You don't know what tired is yet! (Re: I'm so tired)

This article is in response to a post entitled "I'm so tired" by @afgncaap.

afgncaap writes:

My days feel like an endless grind. I grind at my demanding job, come home and do the toddler grind.

I write as someone whose first round of toddler grind -- as a parent -- was many years ago, and is now on the second round, as a grandparent.

Dealing with toddlers is, indeed, exhausting. I remember on many occasions, coming home after a brutal day at work, only to have my haggard, pale wife thrust a screaming, soggy, bundle of infant into my arms, saying "your turn!" I remember being so tired that I actually fell asleep on my motorcycle. I was tired in a way that I didn't even know was possible. Tired enough to have hallucinations, and watch my hair fall out clump by clump.

But if you think toddlers are tiring, just wait until you have teenagers. There's a special kind of tired that comes from sitting up all night, waiting for your teenaged kids to come home from whatever fleapit they've been misspending their youth in. Or sitting by your daughter's hospital bed for three nights in a row, watching the machines that go 'ping', because some bastard has spiked her with some unknown narcotic.

Less fraught, but equally draining, is re-learning some aspect of algebra or geometry you last used thirty years ago, to get them through their exams. Or driving all night because they missed the bus that was supposed to take them on the school field-trip to Little Birdshit Island in the Outer Hebrides.

afgncaap continues:

The amount of shit and vomit I've inhaled in the last 5 weeks is enough for several lifetimes...

There's nothing like cleaning up a toddler's digestive output when you're trying to hold back your own vomit, because your kids were at daycare when Mr Norovirus came calling. They really don't care where they spray it, either. There's nothing like cleaning a screaming kid's sick from behind the refrigerator, when you just want to lock yourself in the bathroom until it's all over.

But just wait until you have to clean up after a teenager who's washed down a dodgy doner kebab with half a bottle of Pernod.

As if this wasn't bad enough, the terrible reality is that, if you live long enough, you'll get to go through it all more than once. Parenthood never really ends -- when you think your kids have grown up and become independent, you become a grandparent, and the whole circus comes to town again. There is no light at the end of the tunnel -- only the headlight of the oncoming freight train of your own mortality.

And yet..

While you won't forget the horrors of raising a toddler, later events might show them in a different light. For all the misery of vomit and sleepless nights, a parent is the best thing you can be. I shudder now to think that, if my life had been only slightly different, I might have missed out on all of it. There are many, many wonderful things that come with parenthood. We all know the cliché ones -- Christmas mornings, first words, school plays, blah, blah, blah. But the real joys are subtle, and might even go unnoticed at the time.

It's worth looking out for them, though, in those short, quiet periods between the tantrum and the puking that inevitably follows.

Published 2026-09-18, updated 2026-09-18

Tired? You don't know what tired is yet! (Re: I'm so tired)

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