Parenting: The Next Level
By: Laugh In The Face Of Dadversity
Tags: Parenting, Gaming, Family, Kids, Dads

Despite having 2 kids and a rapidly declining amount of free time, I’m still a pretty big Gamer. I rarely commit to playing online these days and instead get my kicks off from trying to finish solo games on the highest difficulty setting. The sheer unrelenting challenge of trying to finish all 100 levels of the palace on Devil May Cry 5 gets me into the rare escapist's zone between therapeutic button mashing and laser focus. And as I fall short, again, after 126 minutes of play on the 98th level, and am forced to start over again — it’s only now I’ve realised one key parallel between Parenting and Gaming:

The Next Level Is Always Harder

I remember getting home from the hospital after having our first kid. I was so exhausted when I sat down on the bed to send a text to my grandma, I passed out before I could get the phone out of my pocket. And I wasn’t even the one who had to give birth.

“Fortunately, that’s over now. And I’ll never be this tired again,” I thought.

Except well. Every night for the next year of course. Because although all newborns do is sleep, they genuinely have no idea how to get it. In fact, they love sleep so much, that they scream at the top of their lungs when they need it, instead of just doing the whole sleep thing.

And that’s how you get stuck in this cycle of looking forwards. Hoping that once you reached one milestone or master that one thing that’s making your life a nightmare, everything else will get easier.

Spoiler: It never does.

Once they learn to sleep, you briefly wonder if you’ve cracked the parenting code and if anyone else finds life such a breeze. Except now they’ve learned to roll. Meaning when you pop them on the bed and turn around to wipe the puke off your top, you turn back to find them gone.

“But soon, they’ll stop all this rolling crap and crawl properly.” Big mistake.

Now it’s not just when they’re on the bed, it’s every single moment they’re not in your hands. Your biggest mistake is thinking that babies are tiny and utterly un-fast. But actually, a baby is like a rocket-propelled grenade bearing down on its target. No room is safe now. Cupboards, drawers and your bottle of Kraken rum are now within their radius.

Then comes the big change. They’re up on two feet. Walking. But not like you or I. No, toddlers speed around at a breakneck pace, with little to no balance and a 100% disregard for objects in their path. I’ve saved my son from death at the hands of table corners, glass doors, unnecessarily tall humans, and speeding cars. And that’s before we’ve made it to the end of the road.

So how do you find relief from this 24/7 bodyguard gig? Pack them off to nursery of course. Easy! Easy? Not easy. For a start nursery costs are so high — you’ll probably have to choose between sending that and university before your kid is a year old. But the real problem is that all those things you used to save your kid from, well, nursery playgrounds are basically a survival of the fittest-type Thunderdome-type gauntlet. You send your kid in at 9AM and hope that you get them back at the end of the day in a similar condition with all their teeth still intact and their limbs still attached.

“At least school will be more civilised.”

Well, actually, it is. There is less carnage. Fewer broken limbs. And I only get that yellow slip describing what my daughter has smashed her head against once per week — twice tops. But now, there’s an altogether different challenge to wrestle with. Socialising. You know when you get to the end of a tough level and there’s an enormous BOSS waiting for you at the end. This is that.

Yep, your kid has a social life now. They spend less time playing and more time talking. And they’re surrounded by all kinds of other potential maniacs whose parents are raising them with entirely different values to you.

Every day I walk my daughter home and more often than not, she’s grappling with something close to her heart. Distressed because she couldn’t do maths as well as the girl next to her. Disheartened because the teacher separated her and her best friend. Heartbroken because someone made fun of her hairstyle. And me wondering each time what to say to help strengthen her each time.

My daughter is six by the way. And I’m barely at the start of this game. I still have so much to come. We’re halfway to teenage already!

Some might argue the early days are still the hardest. But I’d say that just like any time you sit down with a new game, you simply don’t know how to play yet. The controls, the context, the strategy. It’s all-new. It takes time to get all that down, die a few times on the first level, and figure how it all works. Then it simply comes down to how well you tackle each new challenge as it comes.

And for the new dads welcoming kids into the world, reaching out to their mates saying —

“Dude, why the hell didn’t you tell me it was going to be this hard!?!”

I’m afraid that’s simply because your seasoned veteran dad-friend is now on level 18. He can barely remember what level 1 was like, except that in hindsight it all felt like a breeze compared to watching his kid try to get a degree, job, partner, or even sometimes just trying to come home safely.

But never give up! That’s what being a parent, and a gamer, is all about. Persevering and getting better until finally, you figure it out. Or… just muddling your way through it all like most of us do.

Either way, you started this game and now you just have to keep playing.