http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mobileweb/glennon-melton/dont-carpe-diem_b_1206346.html                                                                                                                        

        Here is an article by a mother of young children. She is pointing out that it is not easy to raise young children and that she gets irritated by older women who come up and say “Enjoy them now. It goes by so fast”. She wonders if they remember what it was like raising children. I need to be the first to apologize for this. I do that all the time. It is a little like labor. It hurts but you don’t think about the pain when it is over and you are holding the baby in your arms (and true I have never heard of a labor nurse telling someone to enjoy it because it will be over soon). It is not a case of bad memory. I remember standing in line in the supermarket with a screaming baby , gum in the hair, bed time struggles and days when nothing went right and all that. It is more a matter of perspective. Now that my children are grown, I only think of the good memories. There is no point in dwelling on the hard stuff and it all turned out all right in the end. Raising young children is hard and raising teenagers even harder (though this author has not gone there yet) but it is also rewarding. You can only to do the best you can and not take it personally when your child is not behaving like you planned they would behave. They seem to start out with minds of their own… and that is a good thing.  One should not want Stepford  Children. When your children are grown, maybe with children of their own, you fondly remember the time when they were small and it seems like it passed in no time. Well it did. It was only 2 decades of your life (out of the 5 or 6 that you have lived (she specifically mentions older women).  Yes, they are still your children, but they no longer fight to cuddle with you or look to find you first in a crowd.  They don’t beg you to play with them or push them on the swing. They no longer live in your house and you may not even see them every day. You miss the opportunity to play with them and wonder where the time went. You wonder why you did not spend more time with them when they were younger (no matter how much time you did spend with them.)  So forgive us for trying to remind you to find the joy now, yes even at the supermarket when one is running off and the other is taking all the gum out of the rack in front of the cash register and you are already late for an appointment. We remember how hard it was but we are happy that we had that little time with them and want you to know that you will be too.  You are right. Maybe we should be more sympathetic. I will try in the future. What should I say?  “I know it is hard now, but just think, in 10 years, you will wish you were back here.”???