One Unexpected Benefit of Having Children

They drag you into the future.

Nihan Kucukural
ILLUMINATION-Curated
3 min readNov 21, 2020

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Photo by Alex Haney on Unsplash

My best friend and I were flatmates. One day, we found out that there was a new pop music icon.

It had been a few months since this lady had burst onto the scene. Apparently she was everywhere. The world knew her but neither of us had heard about her until that moment!

We looked at each other.

“We are falling behind!” I said, “We are getting old!” We were in our late twenties. “What will we do?”

The Internet was young, there were no social media back then. I suggested subscribing to a youth magazine to catch up. The reality was, we weren’t even interested in pop music celebrities any more; we just hated to fall behind.

So my friend said “Hey! I have an idea. Let’s have a child. He can learn from the magazine, and we can learn from him!”

Yes, she is funny.

I know I have suggested this before.

Rest assured, I am not trying to convince anyone to have kids. There are hundreds of valid reasons not to have children. In fact, I had no interest in it myself until I was 39.

My partner and I once talked about why we didn’t want children. I said, “I don’t want to be a person who says no all the time.” And my partner said, “You are not supposed to say no all the time; you are supposed to say yes.” That was the moment my mind opened up to the possibility. But not all concerns can be overcome so easily. If you don’t like children, please don’t have any!

Parenting is learning

Last Sunday we were driving in the car with my eight-year-old and his friend. On the friend’s tablet, they played some music I had never heard, and I was shocked to hear that my son already knew the lyrics. I remembered my old friend’s genius suggestion from years ago. It had already begun!

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Nihan Kucukural
ILLUMINATION-Curated

Turkish copywriter and screenwriter based in New Zealand. I am addicted to stories. I write screenwriting/copywriting advice and occasional funny stuff.