How to be happy with your parenting
By: Joanna Taraszkiewicz
Tags: Parenting Advice, High Need Baby, Parenting

Here’s a concise guide for struggling parents written by a mother who was early on forced to abandon delusions about parenting.

Know who you are, like yourself and listen to what other parents advise, but use that advice only when you are struggling.

If you were ready for a long text on parenting styles or a set of tips and tricks, at this point you probably feel disappointed. Hold your horses, though. I may be the parent who has read too many books to enjoy talking about things you may have already discovered on your own, but still, I can save you a lot of time, effort and… more disappointment.

Contrary to what they tell you parenting is not a thing you do, but rather a thing you experience. If you read all the advice there is now on how to parent a child it all boils down to “come to terms with whatever is going on”. Is that counter-intuitive? Not for under-educated humans who don’t panic when expecting. It is, however, for us — the eager to be well-prepared for everything that’s coming.

I am one of these people. Before my baby was born, I had read all the books I could find on the topic of feeding and rearing a healthy and happy child. I was in the habit of asking mothers what worked and what didn’t. And I carefully observed their children to see how much those mothers’ parenting styles did influence their offspring’s behaviour, only to conclude that children were strikingly similar to their moms, but somehow impervious to any parenting methods.

Science says… you can’t do anything

I also knew Steven Pinker’s book The Blank Slate. The Modern Denial of Human Nature. where it is explicitly stated that parents can’t instil any particular behaviour or character trait in their children. Who we are is more a matter of genes and our peers than what the parent tries to impart. I accepted that in all my humbleness, feeling absolved of all responsibility for the way my son would choose to live his life. Still, when my boy was born, I fell prey to experts advising on how to manage my relationship with him.

You don’t need any guidance on love

Until I finally read an interview with the late Jasper Juul, a Swedish family therapist. What differentiated him from other “experts” was that he told parents not to rely on any one’s advice, his included. He explained that no one needs any kind of guidance on the relationship with their child, as children are just people, like your mom or friends, or colleagues. You don’t usually seek advice on how to handle your relationship with them, do you? You just pay attention to who they are and then respond to them with who you are.

It may be difficult to understand what Juul meant, even if your child is at that very moment eating soap or frustrating over his inability to put a big rock inside a matchbox truck. We, parents, are to help our children realize their human potential, teach them to be resilient and confident, and ready to achieve their goals. Well, no.

It is difficult to grasp that “no”, unless you have the high need baby, then it’s pretty obvious. I was blessed with a frustrated, whining baby, whom you can call by that euphemistic expression coined by Dr Sears. My son left me no choice but to embrace his personality. Nothing I had read prepared me in any way for what happened when he was born. No advice worked. No advice even began to make sense. Dr Sears himself couldn’t offer any practical advice beyond the comforting words, which can be summarized to “Everything is OK with your child. Just survive”.

I have survived to this very day. Not on any advice, of course. Juul was right — what truly mattered was my willingness to get to know my son and… accept him the way he was. And treat him accordingly.

Stay true to yourself

What we, parents, tend to forget is that there are no ready-made answers to our questions. We have to find our own ways of dealing with whatever is happening in our lives. To do so, we have to fully understand who we are, and we have to like what we find to be true about ourselves. If we are strict, there’s no point in being lenient. If we care about the order, there’s no point in letting our children off the hook when it comes to cleaning up. No matter how we or others imagine the perfect parent, we have to adhere to our ways. Your friends and your partner have come to terms with your quirks, why wouldn’t your child?

Yes, I know. You want to strive for perfection out of love. I don’t suggest here to abandon all efforts. You make them out of respect for your spouse or friends, too. But I strongly advise you to be realistic. Because whenever you do something contrary to your own beliefs, it comes back to haunt you. Your child will notice that you get tense when she litters the floor. She will sense your insincerity and interpret it in her own way. And you will burst out in anger sooner or later, seeing her throw her toys around.

One side note, though: make sure you know what a child can do or grasp at his stage of development. You can’t expect him to behave like an adult. It helps a lot to understand why he eats soap or loves hurling heavy stuff across the room. It helps you, not your child. He’ll win that war anyway.

Don’t copy, but do listen

I said I listened to people ranting about their parenting successes that were in fact failures. And I still do listen to their advice. Not necessarily the experts trying to sell the biggest number of copies of their books, but my parents, friends, and colleagues. And I suggest you’ll do the same.

They don’t have any solutions that you can copy without much reflection. They can even have nothing relevant to your situation whatsoever. But they do have the experience, and that’s what can help you figure out what to do. They have experimented and now you can learn from their trials and errors. So listen carefully, but don’t act on what you hear. Unless you are struggling.

I believe an example is in order. Let me then explain how it has worked for me. My son is really bad at falling (and staying) asleep. I’ve read everything there is on baby’s sleep. Yep, “you have to survive” advice prevails, but there is a handful of things experts and parents suggest. Teach your child to fall asleep on her own. Rock her to sleep, as the baby is not yet wired to fall asleep on her own. Co-sleep. Always put the baby to sleep in his own crib. Help the child sleep when she has been overstimulated. Be consistent. Wake the baby up at the same hour every day. Don’t ever wake up the baby. And so on, you get what I mean.

Since the day he was born, my baby has been changing and my task has been to recognize these changes and respond to them accordingly. Whenever new sleep patterns emerged, I experimented with new approaches that seemed relevant, but I kept adjusting my ways to my son’s personality. His sleep couldn’t be regulated in any way when he was a baby, but since he became a toddler he has benefited a lot from a fix and early bedtime. He’s very sensitive to what happens during the day, so occasionally, e.g. when new people call on us, I sing him to sleep, although he is capable of falling asleep on his own, etc.

But during the first months of motherhood, I was at my wit’s end, rocking my baby on an almost a 24/7 basis. I had been advised to meet all his needs until he turned three months, and I waited until then. I was glad I did — to me, Dr Karp’s concept of 4th trimester of pregnancy, just like for the majority of my friends and family, turned out to be true. Nonetheless, I was exhausted at that point. In utter desperation, I took the advice of Tracey Hogg, the author of Secrets of the Baby Whisperer. It helped. Well, sort of. It didn’t change as much as the expert claimed it would, but at least I stopped rocking my son. And that was huge, considering his high needs.

Abandon delusions and just be there for your child

It’s easier to be a parent once you realize your responsibility is limited to keeping your child safe. However, you are still a person who is welcoming another person to his or her life. So get to know that alien inside your house and thus grow to like her. Respect who your child is. And be a friend to him. That’s who parents are — friends who don’t expect anything in return for their love, apart from… friendship.