When I was a little kid, I thought my parents knew everything. And not just because they’re uber-smart.
They just seemed to know everything about raising kids. My dad just knew the perfect stories to tell me before bed, like the stories he made up about a little girl, her best friend, and their adventures with the talking apple tree in their neighborhood {which I later learned had been inspired by Lord of the Rings.}
My mom sang Joni Mitchell songs to me at bedtime. She just knew how to comfort me, like the time I came home from school sobbing because I hadn’t been invited to a friend’s birthday party.
They knew exactly what they were doing. They were mom-and-dad, and clearly had only ever been mom-and-dad. Because isn’t parenting natural and intuitive?
You would think that certain life experiences would have clued me in to the fact that my parents, like all of us, were maybe, at times … clueless. Sometimes, the people who seem to have it all figured out are actually just as confused as we are.
For example, I remember on my first day of high school, the seniors seemed so big and so cool and clearly they had it all together. Admittedly, my only evidence of this was their size and their ability to chant “SENIORS! SENIORS!” at pep fests. But they were pretty loud. So they must have known what they were doing.
But by the time I was a senior, overwhelmed with advanced classes and college applications and John Hughes-esque drama, I realized it had all been an act. No one really had it all together.
Yet parenting is still perceived as something that we should just know how to do. Humans and human-like creatures have been raising little humans for millions of years. Granted, they weren’t dealing with competitive preschool admissions or complicated math homework, but the basics should just be … basic, right?
As I approached motherhood, I reassured myself that I would know what I was doing. I’d babysat in high school. I had worked in daycare for several years to pay for graduate school. And, I had read some books.
My dad actually mocked me when he saw me reading a book about breastfeeding when I was pregnant. “There’s an entire book about breastfeeding?” he asked.
Representation of Lucy (Australopithecus). Natural History Museum.
{Source: Wikimedia Commons}
I didn’t mention that we had also taken an entire class about breastfeeding. I’m quite certain Lucy {see picture} did not take a class about nursing her young.
Breastfeeding actually did proceed quite naturally for me and my daughter, but as for the rest, I felt pretty incompetent in those first few weeks of motherhood. I realized after several weeks I had been buckling her car seat wrong. I posted questions in online forums about whether I should be putting a hat on her while we were inside, or if her amounts of spit up were normal.
I decided to read more books.
I know many people mock the slew of parenting books today, noting that for 99% of the existence of our species, parents did not need manuals for their offspring. True, but australopithecus mamas did not have to navigate playdate protocols or rules for expressed breastmilk storage or revised immunization schedules. And they had their village, embodying the collective wisdom of the species, right there with them. They weren’t isolated in big houses in the suburbs, sometimes venturing out on gathering expeditions to Target while the menfolk hunted the elusive woolly mammoth paycheck.
As I read my parenting books and learned strategies that I could use with my child, strategies that actually worked, I gained more confidence as a mother. Sometimes we do need the expert advice when we’re so overwhelmed by the cacophony of daily life with little ones that we cannot even hear our intuition’s quiet voice.
I read books about sleep {who would have thought we would need to read books to get babies to sleep, of all things?}, and I finally got eight consecutive hours of sleep after months of dangerous sleep-deprivation.
More recently, when I tried to teach mindfulness strategies to my daughter, I found that my instructions to “Just breathe!” didn’t really work. I read Planting Seeds by Thich Nhat Hanh, and discovered activities that worked for teaching calming techniques to children. Though I understood mindfulness and meditation on a grown-up level, I needed some help translating those concepts into six-year-old language. {Poor Lucy, who only had grunting…}
I’ve come to realize that “mother’s intuition” is highly overrated.
One day, when my daughter was about 18 months, I brought her home early because she had thrown up at daycare. I consulted my parenting books, which informed me that she could have some sips of water or Pedialyte, but that I shouldn’t give her food. So I gave her a few sips of water, and we both took a long nap. She seemed much better when she woke up. She hadn’t thrown up for hours. She was hungry. My intuition told me maybe the throwing up had been a fluke, and it would be okay to give her some yogurt.
Ten minutes later, my intuition and I were scrubbing yogurt vomit out of a beautiful Pottery Barn rug.
I continue to be an avid reader of parenting books. I am currently reading How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk, and it is amazing. It’s filled with images like this:
My first thought was, “Seriously? Maybe that would work if I had named my child Siddhartha!”
But I tried it. Several months ago, my daughter was having one of her typical meltdowns, because her clueless mother decided to make chicken for dinner.
“I am NOT going to eat it! I HATE chicken! I’m not going to eat anything you cook EVER again!” You get the picture.
My intuition/teacher training told me to assert my authority ~ she will eat what I make because that’s the way it works in this house! This likely would have led to more screaming and frustration. And when she’s mad, just telling her to calm down and breathe generally backfires. Instead, I followed the technique I had read in the book: I listened, I acknowledged her anger, I gave her emotion a name, and I granted her wish for a different dinner in fantasy form.
And… it worked!
Not only did her anger subside, she actually asked to help me cook the chicken. Little Siddhartha ate, and even enjoyed, her dinner!
I know that parenting cannot always be done by the book… but I also know that I’ve learned a lot about how to parent from books. For some of us, mothering may come naturally. For others, our first instinct may be to turn to the experts.
And if all else fails, we can grunt in exasperation and go sleep in a cave. Lucy probably did that once in a while, too.
*****
I’d love to hear what parenting books YOU love! Let me know in the comments.
{You can also learn about our Brilliant Book Club for Parents by clicking here.}
This post is part of the Finish the Sentence Friday linkup. You can read more posts finishing the statement, “When I was a little kid, I thought…” by clicking the image below.
Top photo credit: Wikimedia Commons. Author Twice25. Modified with permission.
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