What's Your Parent Superpower?

Are you able to leap piles of toys in a single bound? Can you read minds and decipher what your child wants without them saying? Under the daily pressures of parenthood, we all develop new skills and talents. Some of them might even be considered superpowers. However many (or few) of the following powers you’ve developed, you’ll always be the biggest superhero to your kids. Superparents Assemble!

Every parent develops a sixth sense surrounding minor accidents. Sometimes, you simply reach out and catch a falling object without even looking. Beaker about to tumble? TV remote moments from getting nudged off the sofa? Toddler angling to plummet from the stool? Your superpowers kick in to prevent the calamity. 

As parents, our ears are attuned to the slightest murmur. It begins in the earliest days of parenthood. Whenever baby is asleep in his/her cot in another room, our ears are constantly straining to pick up any noise. Our powers build up until, in the toddler years, we can distinguish the shouts of our child from the other side of the park.

“Uh, I only got six hours sleep last night,” you might have moaned a few years ago, before the kids came along. Since becoming a parent, though, you’ve learned to function on about that many hours a week. OK, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but ‘functioning insomniac’ is definitely a superpower all parents must master at some point in the early years. It gets better!

Piles of stuff. You always had them. Everyone does. But since having kids, they’ve multiplied exponentially. Teetering towers of toys; bravely balanced books; discarded shoes that gather in the middle of the floor. As a parent, you’ve developed an uncanny ability to hop and twirl between these piles without collision, often while carrying a hot drink in one hand and your laptop in the other. Just watch out for the rogue Lego bricks. They sting.

Babies can’t talk. Obviously. So mom and dad have to try to deduce their infant’s needs from other cues. Those skills come in handy when the kid enters the ‘terrible twos’ and ‘threenager’ period (and beyond), where communication often gets cryptic and fraught. The sulk, the silence, the whispered answer you have no chance of hearing, the unspoken whim - you know how to interpret them all and work out what’s going on with your child, without spoken communication.

During this phase, it may not be enough to read your child’s mind. Guess correct, and they’ll likely pull a reverse and want the opposite, to test the boundaries. At this point, negotiation or distraction are your most useful superpowers. 

Parents and carers get a pretty thorough upper-body workout from the constant pick-me-up-put-me-down routine. I’m pretty sure that my biceps are bigger than in my childless days. The real bodybuilding time is when junior is getting just a little bit too big for the buggy, but isn’t yet too enthusiastic about walking any distance. They’re heavy, and they need carrying. All. The. Time.

No matter how clumsy your football skills, your kids will think you’re an absolute legend… at least while they’re young. If you can just achieve three or four keepy-uppies, or kick the ball from your hands, or even just aim it in vaguely the right place, then you’ll be another Ronaldo in their eyes. Of course, as soon as they’ve been practicing a few years, they’ll be running circles around you - but enjoy the superpower while it lasts.

1. The Mary Poppins ability to click our fingers and make stuff tidy up. 

2. Instant teleport to make short work of the school run, and banish forever the cries of ‘are we nearly there yet?’ on car journeys.

3. The ability to turn water into milkshake - and back again - to deal with changing whim.

4. Stretchy arms like Elastigirl from The Incredibles, so we could tackle almost all childcare needs without getting up from the sofa.

5. Superfast running speed - so we can make a trip to the shops in seconds every time we run out of wet wipes or fruit snacks.

6. Invisibility… so we can get 10 minutes peace with nobody able to find us!

See Also

The Ultimate Superhero Trivia Quiz

80 Superhero Quotes To Help You Save The World

Wow! Zap! Bang! Step By Step Guide To Creating A Comic Strip