I have often wondered....a lot of things, really, but this one thing has come to the front again and again. How does God expect any person to become a parent and be any good at it. How He knows they will become parents is pretty well established and it seems to be working great for a good portion of my friends and family. There are definitely some who are now or have in the past struggled with infertility- and my heart goes out to them. I definitely have no idea how that feels. At all.
But the part where they (parents) are any good at it is the part that has me shaking my head in wonder.
First of all, there really is no training available that really does parenthood justice. It helps if you are an older child in a larger family or a younger child of a larger family and prolific siblings who provide material for study but in the end it turns out that all you really walk away with is a little more realistic expectations of how much baby poop stinks and how many dishes a big family can make in a  short period of time. Because, really, have you noticed that children sleep really well through babies crying, they aren't bothered (much) by noise if that is what they are used to - and they don't worry about all their siblings growing up and going to jail. Or if they do, it's a fleeting and perhaps at times even a hopeful one if regarding an older brother they deem a menace to society that should be locked up to preserve their Barbie's lives.....or heads....or whatever you call what Barbies' have.
I became a parent at a young age and I'm grateful that I learned to spell early on in life because that's really the only thing that has felt orderly in my life since. There are few times that I remember peaceful silence in my house in the past seventeen years with the exceptions of those times that all the kids went with Dad to feed cows or everyone was napping at the same time and that creates a magical equation for the unique parenting style I like to call "Interrupted Parenting".
This is a method were the mother spends a lot of time trying to recall the page number she is on in the child rearing book she is trying to read while nursing and re-reading parts that she finally recognizes after a few paragraphs and skips ahead hoping to guess close since the bookmark was knocked out of the book when it was bumped off the arm of the chair she uses for feedings. Because once you get that baby latched on you aren't going to go looking for it, Heaven knows.
She soon advances to cooking, cleaning and paying bills punctuated with baby crying for attention in the background of every call which confuses the heck out of those stupid automated machines who love to repeat "I'm sorry, I couldn't understand that. Please try again."  There would be silence for a moment and emboldened, Mommy starts again,,,,just as baby drops the favorite toy and begins wailing. Nevermind the wait of twenty minutes, at this point Mommy would kill for a live person to talk to who can guess what you're saying in the moments of silence.
Being interrupted is difficult so she becomes an expert at waiting until baby is sleeping to do anything possible and after bedtime she catches up on anything she missed and decides that she didn't really need sleep anyway.
If she's blessed she might have several more children close enough together to make certain that one child will interrupt the other child who is having their story read while Mommy is nursing and she is off the hook of ever having to finish that book about how to get babies to eat, sleep and poop in some sort of intelligent fashion that allows for uninterrupted showers or whatever but she doesn't really care that much anymore because she doesn't really know what showering alone is like anymore anyway. She has learned that at least if baby is buckled into their car seat in the bathroom and is sleeping when the shower begins, at least you know if there is crying it isn't because Daddy forgot to watch out for the fast two year old and he isn't smothering the baby with too many kisses or a blanket or anything and she can relax through the crying as she showers as fast as humanly possible. Though she sometimes wonders if showering is really necessary- there are tribes that don't, and they don't do much laundry either.......hhhmmm.
She advances over time to the the stage where she doesn't really notice the frequent punctions of "Mom! Mom!" as much anymore as she ties the shoes and buttons the pants as she  cleans while on the phone and dispenses drinks with almost telepathic ability, only rarely giving the cup to the wrong child or kissing the boo-boo on the wrong elbow. But she can't seem to remember very many things for very long.....is it the fact she hasn't had a full and uninterrupted night's sleep in almost twenty years? Or maybe that she hasn't had a thought process without interruption in almost that long?  When her spouse takes her out for a rare evening away and she either sits in silence and can't think of anything to say that doesn't involve the children or she can't stop talking because no one has listened to her all day it may seem strange to someone who speaks to one person at a time in an organized fashion- maybe even with a secretary to run interference and prevent interruptions. It may seem odd to someone who hasn't ever had a group of children sit and stare at them as they are trying desperately to zone out enough to hear themselves think taking bets about what's wrong with her until a little impatient one takes her face in between both hands and yells "Mom! I want an orange!"
Several days ago I was trying to print four pages of financial statements off the internet with my phone. The phone was not defective, the printer was not defective or even out of paper. It took me an hour. I called a teenage boy down from upstairs, out of the bathroom and in from outside at least four times to finish his chore of sweeping the floor, dialed a number for another so he could call a friend, helped another child with four math problems because it couldn't wait- you know, URGENT math- and helped a toddler down off the sofa so he wouldn't jump on his sibling who was sitting smashed up next to me watching me push "Print". I also answered several questions from other children and called someone to get the toddler a drink. And change his stinky diaper for me. No I didn't pay them any money or favors, I reminded them they get groceries and clothes and don't pay rent. It was discussed but I held firm. My husband called me a little later and asked if I were finished printing them off and when I told him I had just barely got them, he wondered aloud (silly man)" What were you doing that took so long?"  I am considering going on vacation alone - perhaps to take part in a sleep study, where I could get paid to sleep without interuptions and leaving him home with the kids to find out what I was doing. They say women need more sleep because they use so much of their brain in so many areas at the same time. I wish it were possible but more sleep has yet to materialize. My parenting plans have been quite impressive in the past, the times that I remember what they are and they usually last just long enough to create hope in my bosom before they get interrupted by chicken pox, winter, morning sickness, accidents, emotional upheaval, travel or death. So I conclude that God intended for parents to love their kids and mess them up all at the same time. If that weren't the plan He would have made sleep a part of the equation. Or maybe the solution is hiding in one of those books stashed so carefully under a chair somewhere. I hope it's not any further back in the book than chapter one........
* Completely random sidenote- I was only interrupted ten times while typing this ....in the first ten minutes that is. My toddler is jumping off his bed and landing on the floor which happens to be right above my head. Over and over. This doesn't count as an interruption. I don't have to do anything about it unless I adhere to a system of child training. I seem to have lost the book that explains that one.