I had particularly little experience with young children before I had my own.
I was the youngest child in a family of six, & I was never keen on the idea of baby resting when I got to school & needed section time work to gain money. Instead, I mowed my neighbor’s lawn on & off to rake in a little bit of currency. It worked & I was able to save & buy things prefer trading cards, CDs, & food at restaurants with friends on the weekends. My sister was the baby sitter in the family & it’s no surprise that she was the first a single of us siblings to have children of her own. I was the hour sibling to have a family, however I had the least experience by far. If it wasn’t for my wife, I don’t believe how my kids would be—probably some combination of screwed up & disfigured from a father who has no idea what he is doing half of the time. I believe that I am doing the right thing a single minute, only to realize it failed to have the intended effect. For instance, I told my kids a long time ago to stop touching the HVAC control unit because they could accidentally split the a/c or the furnace in the process. Despite repeated warnings from myself & my wife, our kids keep showing a lack of respect for the control unit & the HVAC plan that it controls. I didn’t want to be the parent that put a lockbox on the control unit, however I had no choice. I can’t afford to buy a current a/c or furnace just because our children don’t respect our rules.