Childrearing is tough. In case no one has yet informed you, I'm telling you now: It's TOUGH. Andrew and I were diligent about reading books on parenting in the first year because we had some idea that it might be at least somewhat challenging. The problem with most of the relevant books available on the market is that everything in them is fairly situation-specific: books on nursing, books on sleep training, books on survival gear, etc.
Somehow in all of that literature a cohesive, explicit philosophy of parenting is sorely lacking.
Over the past few years, we have distilled a lot of our parenting ideology to a dynamic set of principles which we use to guide our decision-making processes. Life would have been so much simpler in the early days had we already had a solidified groundwork of parenting tools. Much as we had discussed during the prenatal months how we would deal with difficult situations, the problems we had envisioned were mostly ones of older children. And we really did not know what sort of real world problems we would encounter, so most of the work of forming this toolbox was done on the fly.
A lot of time and thought, however, was put into our decision to continue with all of these essential guides. Some of them challenged beliefs I had had before being a parent because, as it turned out, once I had a child of my own my feelings toward certain parenting issues evolved. My ideas about what was reasonable or ethical or sensible--even humane--were in flux for a while as Andrew and I moved toward a settled feeling of "this is how we do what we do."
This series of posts is going to focus on generalities rather than specifics. The concepts are ones that I suggest others include in their own parenting philosophy toolboxes, to use as guideposts for making decisions about how to be a parent. This first element to include in the philosophical toolbox is one that Andrew and I recognized early on, because it was highly relevant early in the childrearing process:
1. Babies cry for a reason. This seems like a very obvious statement on the surface, but I assure you it is not. One of the biggest things Andrew and I have focused on since having Jackson is trying to resolve what the reason is when Jackson gets upset. We haven't always been successful, but we've tried--and there's always a reason. Sometimes the solution would come to us well after the fact, and we'd realize: "Oh, he was cold!" or "Oh, his teeth were hurting!" or "Oh, he can't sleep because he has a poopy diaper!" Particularly during his first year, we were often asked, "Is he always this happy?" whenever we would take Jackson places. (Another mom even went so far as to instruct her infant to take lessons in cheerfulness from Jackson.) Most of that radiant happiness I attribute to a feeling of safety and reassurance that he'd received from having parents who recognized and validated his concerns. (Most of the time. Let's be honest: nobody's perfect!)
The really weird thing about this item, and part of why I put it at the very top of the list, is that this is a surprisingly controversial point. Many parents and grandparents are of the opinion that babies cry and that that's just the way it is. Statistically speaking, young babies cry an average of 3 hours per day total. Jackson, on the other hand, cried an average of about half an hour a day for the first several months. Why? Because he had responsive parents who didn't ignore his attempts at communication. It's not because he had a lack of complaints--far from it! He was upset by the same things and just as often, if not more often, than other babies in his age group. The primary distinction is the response he received to the complaints that he made.
For example, he hated being in his car seat to the point of screaming and crying. The main difference between him and other babies I've known with the same issue is in the reaction he received from us as his parents. First of all, I never took him on long trips when I was the one driving because I recognized that he was the least pleased when he felt alone/abandoned. (Keep in mind, he was in a rear-facing car seat.) When Andrew and I went anywhere together, I rode in the back seat with Jackson, or occasionally Andrew would, though he barely fit in the back being the giant that he is. We would talk to him, entertain him with toys, and sing to him. If we were traveling to visit family, we stopped frequently to let him out while I nursed him to sleep, then carried on again. On the other end of the spectrum, I have known moms with children under 6 months of age who refused to stop or even acknowledge the crying and continued driving. Perhaps they turned the volume up on the radio to drown out the sound, but often the end result was a very unhappy child who had screeched displeasure to the point of vomiting.
Are these moms necessarily bad people? No. Are they bad mothers in other regards? No. It's simply as I stated, that many parents just believe that crying is a fact of life. But it doesn't have to be.
Resolve the issue. Your only method of modifying your child's behavior is to modify your own. If the child is complaining, deal with the problem directly. Don't wait. If a child thinks that it takes a lot of crying to get a parent to respond to anything, they tend to cry MORE often and for longer because they have learned that that's what it takes. Children also form a stronger bond and have greater trust in parents who respond to their needs. You cannot spoil a baby through giving your attention and love.
Beyond babyhood this is still an important aspect to being a parent who is focused on the emotional health of a child. Studies have shown that children whose parents are responsive to their questions and desires (even if just to acknowledge them) are less prone to nagging, whining, tantrums, etc. Children whose parents do not acknowledge them in a reasonably brief period of time are far more likely to develop irritating habits in order to gain attention--because that's what they know works.
Make your child's happiness a priority early on in the parenting experience. You will reap the benefits for a long time to come! Who knows? Maybe they'll even put you in a nursing home with TWO shuffleboard courts!
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This is a continuing series, so the next couple of months will see more entries like this one. Feedback would be very much appreciated from any and all readers, either in the comments section below or by emailing me at random(dot)adams(at)gmail(dot)com.
