Becoming a parent is a huge change in our life. We try to prepare but as we hear a lot, we are never ready…and it’s true, because nothing is as we think it would be. Even pregnancy rarely goes as plan. I am sure you are thinking about lots of example right now. I had to be on bed rest 2 months before my due date because I started dilating and was told I would have a preemie… then my son was born 5 days after the due date. The long and hard labor I was told I would have turn out to be 3 hours because of that… don’t get me wrong, I am happy It didn’t take me 15 hours but I was not prepared for it. Then my son slept trough the night at 6 weeks, don’t be jealous too fast, that stoped eventually and my first daughter made up for it by not sleeping trough the night before 6 years old… so yes, my second child slept 10 complete nights for her first 6 years… another thing I wasn’t prepare for.
But by then I was another parent.
By then I had two children and I had met and ear so many stories and receive so many comments and suggestions and read so many contradicting information about raising children… I knew how I wanted to deal with that.
Not that it was not hard and I didn’t had doubts. I had lots of them. But I had chosen a parenting path. I had put aside lots of information and chosen those that were in line with my values, our values.
I had to revisit them often to stay in line and I had, and still have, to make compromise to fit my values into the reality of the world around us that don’t always go in line with them.
But when I am able to keep up with the instinct, keep up with that little inside voice that is telling me something is or is not right for my children it feels sooooo good! And that is not always easy to do and I don’t have any quick easy magic 3 or 10 steps process to make everything work that way and to know how to do that.
But listening to our instinct is the only way to go and we have more and more trouble listening to it. People around us, books, blogs, publicity, the way we were raise sometimes, society in general is messing up with our instinct.
So how do we listen to it? We learn to. We make mistakes as parents, lots of them. And you know what? We will make more of them as they grow older and more of them with another child because it’s another human being and it doesn't work the same…
I often say that what I learned with my older one not only is not helping with my second, it’s in fact making things worst… and now, with my third I know that I need to learn how they works to know how to parent them.
And one thing I started learning and continue to do to this day is which parent I am or at least which parent I want to be. What parenting path I want to take.
I can't keep up with it every day, sometimes I am too tired or preoccupied and kids are too… but then I know I wasn’t in line with my inner parent, I can apologies to them, and to myself, and put things back on track.
And sometimes outside reality is making that extra hard and we must compromise our values to fit that reality and it’s hard, very hard and it hurts. But at least when we know that’s what’s happening we know why we feel bad or uncomfortable and we can put words on it. It’s still hard but knowing makes it a bit more livable. It’s also true for children but that’s a subject for another time.
So whatever path we chose as a parent the hardest and the easiest way is to keep up with it. It’s what makes it bearable to sleep at night or get criticize as a parent by people around us (because yeah, that happens). Doing so takes courage and the ability to set aside and refuse some suggestions or informations and choose those around us (books, blog or real people) that we feel are telling the truth. Our truth.
And when we are not sure still, then looking in the future helps a lot.
Would that mater in 2, 5, 10 years? Would this or that choice make my child a better human being? One that would have been raise with my values in mind?
I have older kids (a tween and a teen) and a preschooler, that helps so much to put things into perspective, but just having parents of older childs around us, some that have similar values, is incredibly rich and will do almost the same.
Lots of things we think matter so much when they are little matter less and less when they grow up.
And this is good news. We have room to learn and make our mistakes, as long as we apologize, realign with our parenting values and try to do better next time, we are good to go.
We need to trust our parenting instinct. And that inner child who know how he would have wanted to be parent.
