May 4, 2025 • 9 mins
In this heartfelt episode of the Happy Families Podcast, Justin and Kylie take a nostalgic look back at the parenting moments that once felt overwhelming — but now feel deeply missed. From sleepless nights to endless toddler questions, they reflect on the beauty hidden in the chaos of raising young children, and why it’s so important to soak up the season you’re in.
KEY POINTS:
-
Parents often miss the toddler years despite how exhausting and chaotic they were.
-
Moments that once drove us crazy — bedtime routines, 3am wakeups, tantrums — are now fond memories.
-
The constant questions from curious toddlers were a sign of trust and connection.
-
Parenting in the early years was hard, but it was also a time of deep attachment and presence.
-
There’s a growing challenge in maintaining community and “the village” that helps raise a child.
-
Slowing down and being present in the moment is easier said than done — but always worth it.
QUOTE OF THE EPISODE:
"I wish I loved it more when I was in it, but I just didn’t have the perspective."
RESOURCES MENTIONED:
-
HappyFamilies.com.au – for more parenting resources.
-
You can read all of the comments on that Facebook post here.
ACTION STEPS FOR PARENTS:
-
Take a moment today to pause and notice something beautiful in the chaos — even if it’s hard.
-
Write down a memory from a tough stage of parenting that now makes you smile.
-
Reach out to someone in your parenting village — connection makes the hard moments easier.
-
Give yourself grace: you won’t always love every moment, but being present matters more than being perfect.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
What are the things that drove you crazy then as
a parent, But it breaks your heart a bit now
that that moment has gone. The kids grow up so fast. Hello.
Welcome to the Happy Families Podcast, Real parenting solutions every
day on Australia's most downloaded parenting podcast. We are Justin
and Kylie Coulson Today. A little bit of nostalgia, a
(00:26):
little bit of is reverie the right word? Some reflection,
an opportunity to look back on the things that make
parenting so hard and yet make it so meaningful and purposeful. Kylie,
I jumped onto Facebook and asked this question recently. You
know what everyone said? Pretty much every single answer we had.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
This pretty much. Toddley is, Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
I miss I missed when I was exhausted. I missed
when my children were biting, kicking, scratching, when they wouldn't
eat the food and threw stuff all over the floor.
I miss those days. I miss the stinking I'm reading
going Nah.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
No, there were some great ones. There was reading the
same book over and over again. Yeah, I missed that
bedtime routine where you're going through the motions and trying
so desperately to have everything calm and your kids are
bouncing on the bed and just having a ball. And
you know the sass and the sticky fingers, the dolllet training,
oh my gosh, toilet training. You know, lying with your
(01:20):
children when you're trying to pat them to sleep and
you've got to try and hide from them, or trying
to work out where the creaky floorboard is that you
don't stomp on it as you walk out the door. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
I mean, I get some of the nostalgia with some
of those, but for most of them, I'm just glad
that we're not dealing with it anymore now that we've
got a granddaughter. I love not having to deal with
most of this stuff. I just love the cuddles and
the fun stuff. But I already loved that, and I'm
literally asking the question, what did drive you crazy? But
now you miss it? And I love some of the
answers that you gave. Is there anything for you?
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (01:53):
There is.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
There's a couple. The first one is that curious toddler
who wants to know why as as a young parent
who felt so time poor and so frazzled most of
the time. Another why just often would send me over
(02:16):
the edge and yet I think back to those years
and what was so beautiful about that was our kid's
desperate desire for connection and curiosity. They want to understand
the world around them, firstly, but they trust that you've
got the answers. And now we've got teenagers who number.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
One, they know everything. They're not curious about there at all.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
And we definitely don't have all the answers. So I
do I really miss those times and how no one
how much easier their questions were that secondly, their desire
to connect.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
I've got one for you. This is going to be
weird because I complained about it incessantly, and I think
if I had to start doing it again, which we
won't because our kids are older, but if I had
to start doing it again, I would complain again. And
yet it's still one of my favorite memories, and those
when our children wouldn't go to sleep, and I would
have to go into the bedroom and I would lay
(03:21):
on the floor and put my arm up and through
the bars of the cot and I would pat them
off to sleep, and usually I would fall asleep on
the floor beside them and wake up at I don't know,
eleven thirty or one am, and you wouldn't come and
get me because you were so exhausted that you would
fall asleep waiting for me to finish patting them off
(03:41):
and come to bed. So I'd just wake up with
a crick in my neck and having slept on the carpet,
having slept on the floor for an hour or two
or three or four. For some reason, as much as
I hated that, I kind of it breaks my heart
that I don't get to lay on the floor and
pat my kids off to sleep anymore. But is that weird?
It feels weird saying it, and yet it's how I feel.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Well, I don't really miss that at all. I'm very
grateful to be sleeping in my own bed again, But
I did used to get really really frustrated with the
kids coming into our bed at three am or whatever time.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
And I don't miss that.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
They'd kick you in the back, and they'd sleep sideways
and you'd end up with a bum in your face,
like all the things. And again, I guess for me,
it's just the acknowledgment that they knew and felt so
safe with us, and again just knew that when they
needed reassurance, there was a safe place to go. I
(04:40):
love that they knew that, but at the time I
absolutely hated it.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
I got one more for you, one more, and I
think you're going to think this is a weird one.
But now that our children are older, so our youngest
is eleven, our oldest in him mid twenties, we often
now I shouldn't say often, but with a lot more
regularity than ever before. We have the house to ourselves
some evenings, maybe one maybe two nights a week. The
(05:14):
kids are all out and one child's running another child
who doesn't have a license around the place, and we
can delegate that responsibility and they're happy to be out
and driving, listen to music in the car and driving
their siblings around, and so we'll be at home. We
get to have dinner alone once or twice a week,
maybe what's a week no kids. I know that when
we go out for dinner or when we get to
have a date night and we look at each other
(05:35):
and go, oh the piece and quiet, how good is it?
But it's kind of different when you have an event
where you go out and have dinner versus you're sitting
at home and it's just the two of you without
the kids. There's no noise, there's no conversation, there's no
discussion about it.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Sounds like heaven to me, I might have a few
more years before I'm going to be in the same
position you're Maybe that's because for me, I still feel
like I'm very much actively parenting.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Yeah, I guess so. And we are making it hard
for ourselves because we had six kids and there's only
with a fifteen year age gap, our youngest being eleven.
We've got an almost two year old granddaughter running around
the place as well, so the house is starting to
get that toddlery feel again. We've had to lift everything
off the bottom shelves and there's toddled toys around. But
I know it's just the noise.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
The noise.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
We don't get it, and.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
You clearly are away way too much because there is
noise in our house.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
I miss it, like I.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Think the nighbors sometimes seeing someone's being murdered and that's
when they're singing. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
So that's kind of me. Is there anything else that's
on you? This might be the world's shortest podcast we've
ever done. Is there anything else from you?
Speaker 2 (06:41):
The last one for me is play Dates in the Park,
I used to really really struggle with going along to
the park and letting the kids play and just kind
of being present, because I would literally be doing a
mental take of what I still had to do when
I got home. And often those playdates would last for hours.
(07:05):
Because we're all stay at home mums, we were looking
for something to keep our kids occupied so they weren't
destroying the house or we weren't having to deal with
the ongoing challenge on our own. And while there were
moments where I really appreciated it, for the most part,
I actually resented it because there were so many other
things I would have liked to have been doing. But now,
(07:25):
as a woman in my mid forties, I recognize the
absolute privilege and blessing it is to have women in
your village. I think that with the changes that have
occurred in society in general, most families have two incomes
(07:46):
mums working as well as dad, it's getting harder and
harder for women to come together and spend time together
building that village, building that community, and I miss it.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
And it's also the downtime righte like so much focus
on efficiency and getting stuff done. Imagine being able to
just go and sit in the park and enjoy it
and watch the kids and not have that feeling of pressure.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Yeah, totally. And when I think about that specifically, one
of your followers actually said something so profound in relation
to that post. She said, I wish I loved it
more when I was in it, but I just didn't
have the perspective. And I remember so many times, older,
more mature parents would see us struggling up to our
(08:34):
elbows in mess and kids and sass and the whole thing,
and they would look at us with fondness and say,
one day you'll miss it. You'll miss it, but your
wish that you'd loved it, And we would both look
at each other and go, they have no idea what
they're talking about. But the reality is there is a
part of me that deeply, deeply wishes that I recognized
(08:59):
it and appreciated it for what it was in the moment.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Well, normally, I've got to take home message. The key takeaway,
I think you've just nailed it. Soak up the moments,
even the hard ones, be present. One day you look
back and you'll miss even the stuff that you can't
believe that you that you would miss, the happy families
podcast is produced by Justin Rouland from Bridge Media.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
If you'd like more
Speaker 1 (09:21):
Information and more resources to make your family happier, we'd
love for you to visit us at happy Families dot
com dot au and we'll link to that Facebook post
in the shows
What are the things that drove you crazy then as
a parent, But it breaks your heart a bit now
that that moment has gone. The kids grow up so fast. Hello.
Welcome to the Happy Families Podcast, Real parenting solutions every
day on Australia's most downloaded parenting podcast. We are Justin
and Kylie Coulson Today. A little bit of nostalgia, a
(00:26):
little bit of is reverie the right word? Some reflection,
an opportunity to look back on the things that make
parenting so hard and yet make it so meaningful and purposeful. Kylie,
I jumped onto Facebook and asked this question recently. You
know what everyone said? Pretty much every single answer we had.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
This pretty much. Toddley is, Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
I miss I missed when I was exhausted. I missed
when my children were biting, kicking, scratching, when they wouldn't
eat the food and threw stuff all over the floor.
I miss those days. I miss the stinking I'm reading
going Nah.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
No, there were some great ones. There was reading the
same book over and over again. Yeah, I missed that
bedtime routine where you're going through the motions and trying
so desperately to have everything calm and your kids are
bouncing on the bed and just having a ball. And
you know the sass and the sticky fingers, the dolllet training,
oh my gosh, toilet training. You know, lying with your
(01:20):
children when you're trying to pat them to sleep and
you've got to try and hide from them, or trying
to work out where the creaky floorboard is that you
don't stomp on it as you walk out the door. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
I mean, I get some of the nostalgia with some
of those, but for most of them, I'm just glad
that we're not dealing with it anymore now that we've
got a granddaughter. I love not having to deal with
most of this stuff. I just love the cuddles and
the fun stuff. But I already loved that, and I'm
literally asking the question, what did drive you crazy? But
now you miss it? And I love some of the
answers that you gave. Is there anything for you?
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (01:53):
There is.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
There's a couple. The first one is that curious toddler
who wants to know why as as a young parent
who felt so time poor and so frazzled most of
the time. Another why just often would send me over
(02:16):
the edge and yet I think back to those years
and what was so beautiful about that was our kid's
desperate desire for connection and curiosity. They want to understand
the world around them, firstly, but they trust that you've
got the answers. And now we've got teenagers who number.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
One, they know everything. They're not curious about there at all.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
And we definitely don't have all the answers. So I
do I really miss those times and how no one
how much easier their questions were that secondly, their desire
to connect.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
I've got one for you. This is going to be
weird because I complained about it incessantly, and I think
if I had to start doing it again, which we
won't because our kids are older, but if I had
to start doing it again, I would complain again. And
yet it's still one of my favorite memories, and those
when our children wouldn't go to sleep, and I would
have to go into the bedroom and I would lay
(03:21):
on the floor and put my arm up and through
the bars of the cot and I would pat them
off to sleep, and usually I would fall asleep on
the floor beside them and wake up at I don't know,
eleven thirty or one am, and you wouldn't come and
get me because you were so exhausted that you would
fall asleep waiting for me to finish patting them off
(03:41):
and come to bed. So I'd just wake up with
a crick in my neck and having slept on the carpet,
having slept on the floor for an hour or two
or three or four. For some reason, as much as
I hated that, I kind of it breaks my heart
that I don't get to lay on the floor and
pat my kids off to sleep anymore. But is that weird?
It feels weird saying it, and yet it's how I feel.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Well, I don't really miss that at all. I'm very
grateful to be sleeping in my own bed again, But
I did used to get really really frustrated with the
kids coming into our bed at three am or whatever time.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
And I don't miss that.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
They'd kick you in the back, and they'd sleep sideways
and you'd end up with a bum in your face,
like all the things. And again, I guess for me,
it's just the acknowledgment that they knew and felt so
safe with us, and again just knew that when they
needed reassurance, there was a safe place to go. I
(04:40):
love that they knew that, but at the time I
absolutely hated it.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
I got one more for you, one more, and I
think you're going to think this is a weird one.
But now that our children are older, so our youngest
is eleven, our oldest in him mid twenties, we often
now I shouldn't say often, but with a lot more
regularity than ever before. We have the house to ourselves
some evenings, maybe one maybe two nights a week. The
(05:14):
kids are all out and one child's running another child
who doesn't have a license around the place, and we
can delegate that responsibility and they're happy to be out
and driving, listen to music in the car and driving
their siblings around, and so we'll be at home. We
get to have dinner alone once or twice a week,
maybe what's a week no kids. I know that when
we go out for dinner or when we get to
have a date night and we look at each other
(05:35):
and go, oh the piece and quiet, how good is it?
But it's kind of different when you have an event
where you go out and have dinner versus you're sitting
at home and it's just the two of you without
the kids. There's no noise, there's no conversation, there's no
discussion about it.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Sounds like heaven to me, I might have a few
more years before I'm going to be in the same
position you're Maybe that's because for me, I still feel
like I'm very much actively parenting.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Yeah, I guess so. And we are making it hard
for ourselves because we had six kids and there's only
with a fifteen year age gap, our youngest being eleven.
We've got an almost two year old granddaughter running around
the place as well, so the house is starting to
get that toddlery feel again. We've had to lift everything
off the bottom shelves and there's toddled toys around. But
I know it's just the noise.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
The noise.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
We don't get it, and.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
You clearly are away way too much because there is
noise in our house.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
I miss it, like I.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Think the nighbors sometimes seeing someone's being murdered and that's
when they're singing. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
So that's kind of me. Is there anything else that's
on you? This might be the world's shortest podcast we've
ever done. Is there anything else from you?
Speaker 2 (06:41):
The last one for me is play Dates in the Park,
I used to really really struggle with going along to
the park and letting the kids play and just kind
of being present, because I would literally be doing a
mental take of what I still had to do when
I got home. And often those playdates would last for hours.
(07:05):
Because we're all stay at home mums, we were looking
for something to keep our kids occupied so they weren't
destroying the house or we weren't having to deal with
the ongoing challenge on our own. And while there were
moments where I really appreciated it, for the most part,
I actually resented it because there were so many other
things I would have liked to have been doing. But now,
(07:25):
as a woman in my mid forties, I recognize the
absolute privilege and blessing it is to have women in
your village. I think that with the changes that have
occurred in society in general, most families have two incomes
(07:46):
mums working as well as dad, it's getting harder and
harder for women to come together and spend time together
building that village, building that community, and I miss it.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
And it's also the downtime righte like so much focus
on efficiency and getting stuff done. Imagine being able to
just go and sit in the park and enjoy it
and watch the kids and not have that feeling of pressure.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Yeah, totally. And when I think about that specifically, one
of your followers actually said something so profound in relation
to that post. She said, I wish I loved it
more when I was in it, but I just didn't
have the perspective. And I remember so many times, older,
more mature parents would see us struggling up to our
(08:34):
elbows in mess and kids and sass and the whole thing,
and they would look at us with fondness and say,
one day you'll miss it. You'll miss it, but your
wish that you'd loved it, And we would both look
at each other and go, they have no idea what
they're talking about. But the reality is there is a
part of me that deeply, deeply wishes that I recognized
(08:59):
it and appreciated it for what it was in the moment.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Well, normally, I've got to take home message. The key takeaway,
I think you've just nailed it. Soak up the moments,
even the hard ones, be present. One day you look
back and you'll miss even the stuff that you can't
believe that you that you would miss, the happy families
podcast is produced by Justin Rouland from Bridge Media.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
If you'd like more
Speaker 1 (09:21):
Information and more resources to make your family happier, we'd
love for you to visit us at happy Families dot
com dot au and we'll link to that Facebook post
in the shows
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