“You can’t be a good mother if you’re not racked with guilt at least half the time…”
When I heard this I realised how far I had come both as a person and as a mother. In my journey to overcome depression I had to do a lot of remodeling inside my head. I had to identify the things that I was saying to myself and the things that others said to me and about me and critically analyse the worth of these thoughts to figure out if they were worthwhile. If it were not for the skills I had developed I might have taken this statement as truth.
The poor mother who blurted this out tries so hard for her little one. He has allergies and can be quite a handful, and she has all the love in the world for him. I think that where a lot of our infant/mother relationship stresses are caused by the fact that we are gentle with our little ones, but we often forget to be gentle with ourselves. If a mother is stressed, it can stress out her kids. Babies can’t tell what “there there, it’s okay…” means, but they know what the tone of voice means and it’s saying “oh no! this is really stressful!”… so is it any wonder that the baby keeps crying?
A group of women share a morning tea together. They are involved in what I think of as “The Baby Competition“. Each mother brags about how far her baby has progressed developmentally, or how much she has grown, or how cute his clothes are, or the new “trick” that she has learned. Each casts her critical eyes on the oblivious youngsters, sizing them up. The mothers’ internal monologue scream their insecurities “Why can’t my baby do that yet? Am I doing something wrong?” It is as though each baby’s stage of development is some sort of yard stick with which to verify parenting success… and why not use such a yard stick? It’s not like we are in a culture that deals with babies and small children all the time. Parents in modern Western society are, for the most part, dealing with alien life forms.
Modern parents are extremely vulnerable. They are burning with the desire to do the best that they can for their children, while being at an information deficit. Most of them didn’t know a fart from a fontanelle before they had their own little bundle of joy. As a result they will believe anything you tell them… anything a friend, family member, health professional, childcare expert, book, magazine or TV advertisement says. Before they know it they are up to their eyeballs in seas of information, mis-information, counter-information and lies… tilling the soil of stress with the seeds of guilt.
As parents we are profoundly affected by what we say to ourselves, and what others say to (or about) us. So how do we gain the confidence to know that the parenting decisions we make are the right ones? In my opinion that is the wrong question to be asking. If we focus so hard on being right to give us confidence we will drive ourselves nuts. There will always be fault to find in some of your decisions with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight and the most we can ever hope for is learning the grace to try our best and weather the consequences. As childcare expert (and Attachment Parenting guru) Dr William Sears says: “Do the best you can with the resources you have – that’s all your child will ever expect of you.”
If we keep striving for (unattainable) perfection it stresses us out and distorts our priorities. Our children learn how to deal with stress from our example… and we don’t really want to be raising a generation of children who, as dinner hosts, are so busy fussing about the entrée being perfect, that they forget to help their guests feel at ease. So what are these “resources” that Sears speaks of? They are things like time, love, skills, things and information. With money stresses these days it is impossible for some parents to spend as much time with their children as they would like. Parents fear that they don’t know enough to stimulate a child academically and so they must relinquish time with their offspring to professional educators. Some parents get lost in the seas of information and expert opinions. Ultimately, I think the important thing is learning that it’s alright to be good enough rather than perfect.
The other day I received a flier from my local supermarket with 4 whole pages of baby care specials. This didn’t seem so odd to me before I had my child but now I realise just how many of these “necessities” are just merchandising traps. I don’t buy any of the things advertised by my local supermarket for my baby! We live in a commoditised world. Every labour saving contraption in the world exists to make our parenting lot easier, but I found that listening to my instincts sent me down another path. So many of these devices caused me more anxiety than joy!
I don’t use pacifiers, bottles, safety cups, disposable nappies, cots, strollers, highchairs, baby wipes, sterilising sprays, or even designer baby gear. My little man is just fine and dandy wearing a cotton singlet on warm days when everyone else’s bubba seems to be double wrapped in designer gear, trying to emulate the latest fashion for 14 year olds. But where do I get the confidence to present my baby to the world, at the ripe old age of 6 months, wearing comfortable clothes rather than disposable nappies and jaunty outfits? I know why.
By that, I mean that instead of taking all the advice of well meaning “experts”, I have done a little research of my own and I have made conscious decisions about how I parent, based on my own feelings, my understanding of my baby’s feelings and some well reasoned research. If I were to listen to the popular media (such as the ABC article I heard on the local news this evening) I would never rock or nurse my son to sleep, never let him sleep in my room and I would learn to let him cry until he gives up and goes to sleep, alone and scared, in his own room. The other day my husband commented: “Things have become so much easier since we started parenting your way rather than listening to what everyone else was telling us.. that was a nightmare!”… and yet he has also been known to ask - “Why do you read all these books that are just telling you to do what you are already doing?” My research has given me the confidence and information to be able to explain myself to those who wish to influence me.
When my health nurse asked me where my baby sleeps I quite proudly explained “in my bed!” and I regaled her with the efforts I have gone to, to make our co-sleeping safer (having a side rail on the bed, having a firm bed, using no pillows for the baby etc.). When the local child health organisation ran talks on “First Foods” for babies I noticed that they were sponsored by a baby food company and the local meat board, so I took the things that were said with a grain of salt (no pun intended) and did my own research on the topic, which confirmed my doubts about a lot of the messages I was given at the talk.
We have to learn to forgive ourselves. We can’t do everything right all the time and we shouldn’t even try. If we try to stop our children from falling they will be perpetually relying on us to stop them from hurting themselves. To quote the film Batman Begins: “And why do we fall, Bruce? So we can learn to pick ourselves up.” We can try our best to make their world a safe place to be, but the inevitable will happen and they will have minds of their own. I’m not blaming myself for my little one’s bangs and scrapes… I’ll just be here to kiss it better when he needs reassurance that it will all be alright, and I will revel in the joy that my young man is becoming an independent person.
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