By Here are the top five things children can teach you:
Family in the garden © Rex
1. It's the little things in life
"I wish I loved anything as much as my children love bubbles", says Paul Rudd's character in the movie, Knocked Up. When you look through your jaded eyes at your children playing madly with bubbles in the garden, just remember that it's those little pleasures that make life worth living.
When was the last time you did something small that you really love? Went for an evening walk? Sat in the garden reading a book? Had a long Sunday lie-in with the papers? Chances are, you haven't done any of them for ages. But that's because you've got children now and those days of freedom, night-walks and book marathons are gone.
Sorry about that.
Not to worry! Maybe think of some even smaller little things in life: getting five minutes on your own to visit the lavatory, for example, or enjoying an entire cup of tea before it goes cold.
[Related article: How not to be a paranoid parent]
2. You can bend time to your will
When you look back to life before children, you'll wonder just how you filled the hours. Some of it was spent having those long Sunday lie-ins with the papers and going for evening walks, but a lot of it was spent doing just one thing at a time, very slowly.
Now that time is your enemy, you know how important it is to *achieve* every minute of the day. That's why you can now hang a new curtain rail, place an online food order, rock a baby to sleep and help a five-year-old with his maths homework all at the same time. Unfortunately, none of those things will have been done particularly well, but at least you can tick them off the loo roll-length to do list. And that's what counts.
3. Creativity comes from youthful enthusiasm.
Terry Gilliam from Monty Python puts his creative success down to not allowing himself to grow old and jaded. By clinging to his childish delight, he has created some of the most imaginative films of the last few decades.
As you grow older, your ability to see wonders fades, and things start to look a bit... samey. That's why, when you spend all afternoon helping your children to colour in pictures and stick bits of tin foil onto card, you're allowed to admit that you're having even more fun than they are – after all, you're working hard at replenishing your creative spirit. Good for you!
[Related article: What the Olympics can teach your child]
4. You spent a long time learning to be you
My daughter used to pass a good portion of every day practising putting the back door key into the lock and learning to open the door. Thankfully, she's still not perfected the art.
It was only when I watched her practising with such focus every day that I realised how much I take those little skills for granted. We all had to learn that the big cup doesn't fit inside the little cup, and a key goes into a keyhole a particular way up.
It's at those little moments that you think, "Wow, that's amazing! I'm really glad it doesn't take me that long to learn basic skills anymore." Something to feel grateful for. Maybe even a little smug.
5. You take your inner two-year-old everywhere
You may be all grown up, but watching a toddler have a tantrum can be a useful reminder that we're all still learning to be adults.
The part of you that still gets sulky in a room full of family members, refuses to back down in an argument even when you're wrong or makes you late for meetings, is the part of you that's still in pre-school.
The part of you that's a parent isn't always much help either – often being overly self-critical or impatient of your failings.
Susan D Smith is a stress management consultant at Bromley Stress Management Centre. She suggests the person you really want in charge is the adult in all of us: "send your child out to play before an important meeting and let your adult take care of things – you'll feel a lot calmer".
Turns out that bawling toddler having a meltdown on your carpet over a broken breadstick isn't so different from you and me after all.
At the heart of Team Mum is the video series Raising an Olympian, sponsored by Proctor and Gamble, profiling athletes from across the world, their dedicated efforts to make it to Olympic Games, and the mothers who had tremendous impacts on their lives. Watch the videos on Yahoo! Lifestyle Team Mum.
