Would you or would you not have a funeral for a toddler should they pass for whatever reason?
I was kinda shocked that my husband thought I was a monster for thinking it’s unnecessary.
The way I see it, you can’t be attached to the child until they’re old enough to display personality, which comes way later than the toddler stage; I just can’t see myself having any attachment before their personality develops. If this happened to me, I’d just chalk it up to a ~2 year time loss and go for another pregnancy. Thoughts?
I am uncertain why nobody has said this but here goes.
The brain is very good at recognising babies and making you like them, especially if it considers them yours. An important part of pregnancy and giving birth is that the mother’s brain produces hormones that make her attached to the kid. That’s to make sure she doesn’t just abandon the little shit the second it starts being annoying. This also includes the father, if he’s involved with the process, albeit probably to a slightly lesser degree because it’s by proxy. To them, that kid isn’t “new” but, as it were, has been around for several months already.
That’s why you’re coming across as absurdly weird saying that parents can’t have formed an emotional attachment with their newborn.
Edit: I said “she” for mothers and “he” for fathers but any pronouns apply of course.
Granted I’m commenting this with no kids, having never liked children ages 0-6, and never interacting with any under maybe 7-8 years:
It’s not that I don’t want to protect the kid, but if it were their death out of my control, I just can’t see myself being at all sad in their passing if they’re younger than 5. Would I want or allow harm to come to them? Absolutely not, but worse come to worse, it’s just loss and move on?
Okay but that’s because you haven’t experienced it. It’s not something you consciously control, it’s an automatic process that your brain triggers for you in that particular situation. You currently lack the chemicals to feel that way because there’s no kid to feel that way about for you. Which is fine. Just accept that it’s outside of your frame of reference.
I can’t imagine not wanting to draw all day. How does that work? Why wouldn’t you want to do nothing but draw? So weird how people choose to do other things instead.
You’d be surprised. There’s definitely something about it that changes you. I can’t watch most Disney movies without tearing up anymore, and before kids, I would have found that very hard to believe. If that kid is walking, you’ll definitely have grown more attached than you expect.
I used to have a very low opinion of kids younger than 5, and genuinely had no idea what they were capable of. I remember having similar thoughts about parents grieving babies, because for milennia we as a species had to deal with children dying all the time, to the point of not even naming them before certain ages. I have a toddler now and boy did I underestimate them. Did you know some speak in full sentences by two and a half? We taught our kid sign language when he was 8 months old so he could tell us what he needed, and by ten months he was telling us he loved trucks, had a surprisingly high tolerance for hot sauce and was a major cuddle bug who had a different favorite color every day (but mostly yellow and blue). He’s three now and knows how to crack jokes, build block castles, can do forward and backward floor somersaults, and even can even do some basic rock climbing. I have parent friends with kids similar ages, one has their kid writing already, another has their kid riding a bicycle, all under 4 years old. They come out of the gate with very distinctive personalities, and every kid is different. I think if you actually knew a toddler well enough to get to know them, you’d realize just how quickly they become a fully realized person.
So, you were born at 18+, eh?
“You must circle the sun this many times before I give a shit about you.”