Why we need to stop telling parents to 'savour every moment'

Our annual camping trip ended in coughs, chaos and crying. And no, I won’t be ‘savouring every moment’ - because some moments are just plain awful.

We were meant to be jumping off bridges into cool creeks and toasting marshmallows under a billion stars.

Instead, we were coughing ourselves inside-out in a tent that smelled like damp towels and defeat.

Our annual family camping trip - normally the stuff of memory-making magic - turned into a flu-infested, emotionally charged survival mission. And somewhere between day three of no sleep, a child refusing Panadol, and me sobbing while trying to pack down a gazebo with one working nostril, I realised something important:

Not every moment is worth savouring. Some of them suck. And that’s OK.

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Not every memory is one for the scrapbook. Image: Supplied.

When paradise turns into a plague pit

It started, as all grand disasters do, with optimism. We were heading off with fellow families to our usual slice of bushland paradise. I'd even prepped a car speech: “This is my holiday too. I’m not spending it being your butler. Everyone pitches in, we all have a great time.”

Cue four sets of glazed eyeballs and unconvincing nods.

We arrived. The sun was shining. The creek was sparkling. The kids ran off. And I immediately started clearing their lunch rubbish off the table while muttering, “So much for the pep talk…”

And then the virus hit.

No one slept

We went down like dominoes. First a sniffle, then the scratchy throat, and suddenly we were starring in our own episode of Camping Plague: The Reckoning. No one slept. Everyone coughed. Someone (me) cried. Multiple times.

We kept telling ourselves we’d feel better tomorrow, but tomorrow never came. Just more germs, more tears, and the joy of parenting in public while profoundly unwell.

Gone were the beach days and marshmallows. In came coughing choruses echoing through canvas walls and the pure dread of realising we were too sick to pack up, but too miserable to stay.

The kids were lethargic and cranky, and I was one rogue sneeze away from a full collapse. Nothing says “holiday” like trying to coax a panadol into a fevered child while fighting the urge to lie down and die on a patch of dirt.

It was hideous.

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Winter swims were replaced by tissues and misery. Image: Supplied.

Stop telling parents to ‘savour every moment’

And yet I know that if I dared say that to a certain breed of parent I’d get a lecture.

Because there’s a special brand of well-meaning madness that circles the parenting trenches, and it sounds like this: “Savour every moment!”

It usually comes from a nostalgic grandparent in the supermarket checkout queue while your toddler is scream-crying over a crushed rice cracker: “You’ll miss this one day!”

Will I, Cheryl? Will I really miss cleaning explosive poo off the bars of a cot at 3am while someone else is screaming for a water bottle that they will then reject because it’s blue?

Look, I get it. I know Cheryl’s not trying to be a jerk. Her comment comes from a place of wistful reflection, where the years have softened the hard edges of her own parenting memories into a lovely, sepia-toned highlight reel. I get it. I even do it myself sometimes - scrolling through baby photos and getting walloped by the urge to go back and squish those buttery-soft thighs, to smell that sweet milky neck just one more time.

But here's the thing: saying “savour every moment” to someone who is neck-deep in the worst bits of parenting is about as helpful as telling a drowning person to “enjoy the swim.”

Because some of it? Some of it just plain sucks.

If I zoom out on those baby photos, there’s always more. The bags under my eyes, big enough to smuggle contraband through customs. The clutter, the chaos, the financial stress. The guilt.

Guilt for staying home. Guilt for working. Guilt for trying to do both and feeling like I was failing at everything.

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We’re already treasuring the good stuff

Nobody needs to remind us to appreciate the magic. We’re doing that. Desperately. We’re clinging to the beautiful moments and praying they’re burning into our kids’ core memories just like they are ours.

But not honouring how crap the crap bits are? That’s not helpful. That just leaves us parenting in silence, wondering if we’re the only ones not loving every second.

We’re not.

This memory won’t make the scrapbook

So no, I will not be looking back fondly on that camping trip. I won’t be scrapbooking the memory of trying to dose a snotty tween who declared Panadol “gross” while I hallucinated from my own fever. That one’s not going in the nostalgia reel.

But I will remember that I got us through it.

And maybe one day, when I’m old and wise and my grandchild is throwing sultanas at my adult kid’s face, I’ll resist the urge to chirp, “You’ll miss this one day.”

Instead, I’ll offer to hold the baby and say, “This bit? It’s awful. You’re doing amazing.”

Originally published as Why we need to stop telling parents to 'savour every moment'