Seven Surprising Things About the First Two Years of Fatherhood

Jan 07, 2025

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Just over two years ago, I became a father. In the run up to my daughter’s second birthday, and with our second child due in May, I’ve been reflecting on the experience of becoming a father. For the most part, it is everything they say it is. The cliches are cliche for a reason. But I also came up with seven surprising things that I’ve learned in that time.

Comprehension develops exponentially more quickly than speech

Prior to my daughter, I hadn’t spent really any time around infants. My mental model for language development was that language comprehension came first, and once a word(s) were understood, the ability to say them came a bit later, but in a somewhat linear fashion. This is completely wrong (below).

I can say fairly complex directions to my daughter and she will understand them (or at least responds correct), yet she can’t even begin to say that multi-clause sentence. Some examples:

“Put this food in Blue’s bowl, bring the scoop back, and then close the lid.”
“Do you want to put on a coat and go to the park?”
“I’m going to put on a timer for ten minutes, do the dishes, then I’ll play with you.”
“Do you want to help Daddy make oatmeal?”
Etc.

It has been fascinating watching my mental model of language comprehension and speech development be utterly shattered.

Seeing them sick is uniquely awful

I did know that as a parent I would suffer new levels of empathetic pain. There is nothing like seeing your own child suffer. What I did not expect was that day-to-day bumps, bruises, and falls would be much easier to tolerate, while seeing them physically ill is much worse then I imagined.

Of course, I don’t like to see my daughter fall or run into things or pinch her fingers in a drawer, but my personal qualia of those types of experiences is that I don’t really suffer that much when they happen. I comfort her, but these are life’s unavoidable but fleeting injuries. She’ll recover.

Yet seeing her physically ill (trust me, there have been many “colds and flus,” especially as we have entered toddler-hood) is a profoundly miserable experience for me. I wish more than anything that I could be sick rather that her. It’s a weight in my gut that I can’t shake. But aren’t “colds and flus” also just part of life’s unavoidable but fleeting injuries?

At first, I thought the difference was just time. She stubs her toe, and yes, it is painful, but only for a few minutes. Meanwhile, an illness can last for several days or longer.

This made sense until I thought of a counterfactual: heartbreak. Many years from now, I presume when she is a teenager, she is going to go through a breakup, and feel down, maybe even physically ill, for weeks and weeks. Yet I imagine that I will be able to separate myself from her pain of that and respond like the brief physical injuries: this is one of life’s unavoidable but fleeting pains, you’ll get through it, and grow stronger.

Maybe breakups are more painful for parents than I’m imagining? Maybe I’m uniquely sensitive and empathic to her sicknesses? I don’t know.

But what I do know is that is if I had “three wishes,” one of them would be that my children would never get physically ill ever again.1

Bluey is incredible

Who would’ve thought that a show about a family of four Australian Cattle Dogs would’ve somehow captured the magic and charm of all the shows that I remember watching as a kid? (Even if I’m sure those memories are viewed with nostalgia-tinted glasses.)

I sure didn’t, but Bluey is everything it is hyped up to be and more.

Through its simple depictions of every life and drama, with all the absurdities and comedy you can imagine, the show relays many of life’s most important lessons. While I hope it is helping to make my daughter a better person, I know its making me a better parent.

Babies don’t have kneecaps

I do not know what type of anatomical sorcery this is but it is true. Believe it or not, I hadn’t palpated the legs of any infants prior to having my own. I knew that the skeletons of babies are immature and unusual in several ways (the lack of a robust, single skull and the resulting holes is the most well-known example), but I guess I never picked up this particular fact: kneecaps don’t start ossifying until ~2-3 years old and don’t finish until ~5-6 years old.

Crayola is the best crayon

I remember as a elementary school kid that we are marveled at the lucky few who had the Crayola 64-pack. Colors like ‘Mac & Cheese’ and ‘Salmon’ were simply inaccessible to us plebians with the 12-pack or 24-pack without the benevolence of those lucky few.

But while child Patrick was focused on the color, adult Patrick is much more focused on quality. And having used several different brands with my daughter, I am no longer surprised that Crayola is brand of crayon that everyone knows. The quality of the draw, the intensity of color, the robustness of the surrounding paper; they are simply the best crayon.

If you’re every driving through Easton, Pennsylvania, the Crayola headquarters and factory was worth the stop. A bit expensive, but worth it to get my daughter’s wiggles out in the middle of an 8-hour car trip.

Becoming more liberal

It’s my perception that the common trope is that people become more conservative after having children. My personal experience has been the opposite.

Our daughter was born premature. Not extremely, but enough that it necessitated some NICU time. Fortunately, this hasn’t affected her physical, social, or emotional development, but she has lagged in her speech development.

The State of Maryland maintains a taxpayer-funded program that any newborn, infant, or toddler who displays any type(s) of developmental delay(s) will be assessed and treated free-of-charge. Our daughter met the qualifications and now a speech development professional comes to our house every ~two weeks to work with her.

We are fortunate that we could’ve afforded the necessary care without this program. But many people can’t. It is truly makes me sick to know that there are people out there, through some twisted “anti-government” or “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” philosophy, think universal social programs for children should not exist, or at minimum they should depend on the charity of the ultra-rich. That we all can’t come together, and yes, pay taxes, to ensure that there are ‘life rafts’ for each and every child that needs them.

Honestly, writing this section is making me emotional. I don’t know how we, as literally the richest nation in the history of humanity, tolerate the existence of “school lunch debt”, especially when ~14 million children live in food insecure homes. How can a single person be worth nearly a half a trillion dollars while thousands of families will go bankrupt each and every year paying for their child’s cancer care and associated costs? How is it acceptable that many schools don’t have air conditioning in them and how that might affect the quality of education for those children whose parents can’t afford fancy private schools?

Listen, when it comes to adults, sure. We all have to go up and take responsibility for ourselves. And I’m also not saying that government officials should come in and force feed broccoli to the kids. But I’d like everyone reading this to really and truly think about John Rawls’ “Veil of Ignorance” thought experiment, and think about how we’d structure our society differently if each of us genuinely took it to heart.

It really is the best thing I’ve ever done

Okay, this one is cliche, but it is true. Becoming a father is simply the best thing that I’ve ever done with my life. I cannot imagine my life without my daughter. Raising her and the others to come will be the challenge of the lifetime, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

If you’re thinking of having children, my advice: do it, immediately.

I eagerly await comments elucidating the ‘genie interpretation’ of how that would go catastrophically wrong for me. But I’m assuming a benevolent genie with this wish.

The Counterpoint