What Should Parents Do When They Feel Totally Overwhelmed?

**Matt Walsh** (0:00)
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All right, so today we'll go back to our lost souls of Reddit to deliver some life advice based on questions that are posed over on Reddit. And I can't promise that my advice is good. It's not legally, I can't be held legally responsible if anyone takes my advice and it goes poorly for them. But I can say that the advice I give is at least better than what you would get from the community at Reddit, which is as low a bar as it can possibly get. Okay, is parenting supposed to be this hard? I, 30 female, have two kids aged five and three. I love them so much, but I also feel like they're making me so down all the time. I feel like a terrible parent. My husband has gone on holiday for a week with some friends and I've really struggled. I ended up getting so angry at my three-year-old yesterday because she asked me to take her to the toilet three times whilst I was trying to eat my dinner. I know it's not her fault if she needs a toilet, but I was so tired and I wanted to eat my dinner in peace and I felt terrible afterwards. I really miss my pre-child life. Everything was so much easier and I was happier. I'm so stressed and tired all the time now. Even trying to get them to go to bed in the evening is such a battle. Sometimes I just want to leave and have my freedom back. Does everyone feel like this or am I just not supposed to be a mum?
British. I pick it up on British from whilst and mum, so I'm really good at these kinds of things. Okay. Well, I can answer the last question. You're supposed to be a mum because you are a mum, so that solves the riddle. If you're a parent, you don't need to sit around thinking, was I supposed to be a parent? Well, you are. You are. So yeah, you're supposed to. In fact, most people are supposed to be parents. So you're doing a thing that billions of people have done before you. It is the basic path that almost everybody follows.
Most of the people who don't follow that path, it's only because they weren't able to for one reason or another. So yeah, you were supposed to. And as to your other question, does everybody feel like this? Well, if by like this, you mean occasionally frustrated, stressed out, irritated, sure. If you mean wanting to be able to eat a meal in peace, again, sure, definitely. But if you mean pining for your childless past, constantly missing the times before you had kids, sort of wishing that you weren't a parent, well, no, not every parent feels that way. I know that because I don't feel that way. And so that's one parent who doesn't. And I think there are many millions more in my camp. And I'm not saying that to make you feel bad. Is that because I'm a better person than you? No, almost certainly not. You could easily be a better person than me. That wouldn't be hard to do. Very low bar. It's not about that. But as a parent myself with two of our six who are now teenagers, I certainly get annoyed with my kids, but I really do deeply enjoy being a parent. And I don't miss at all the days of not being a parent. But I enjoy it now more than I did say 10 years ago. I've grown into the role, which is something that for some reason isn't talked about enough, I don't think. But you grow into it. So I for sure, I enjoy the job of being a parent now more than I did a decade ago. Definitely. And that's part of the story, I think, is that you do grow into it, that you get better at it as you go. Or it should work that way. I mean, it doesn't always, but it should. It often does. That's the way it's meant to work. And we don't really allow for that. You know, we don't take that into account. And we forget to tell young parents. We forget to say to them that like, hey, you're going to suck at this at first. You're going to be really bad at this.