When you became 4 years old, you lost all your previous memories. Having your first kid allow you to relive it again. It’s at least midly amusing to realize how useless you also once was. And to be proud of yourself for growing from someone who (probably) try to eat your own feet, to someone you can now competently writing bullshits on the internet. Oh how far I’ve came.

If you had a good family, you might also have pre-lived your adult life too, in the form of watching your parents lived their lives.You might have a different careers, living in a different house, having different favourite procrastination methods. But the most important stuffs are probably still there: how to raise your kid, how to balance your work life, how to not freak out at your own mortality. Now is the time you can compare notes. The yelling-when-you-did-something-bad is kind of a bluff. The parent-know-it-all fact is definitely not true. The seemingly unreasonable actions might finally have a reason, or maybe the reason was there all along and you are just blind to it.

My mom kept telling me an old saying in Vietnam, roughly translated “You will know your parents’ feeling when you have your own child”. I have always thought it was just about parents’ love for their child. It actually was everything else in their lives as well.