I confess I am tired. I thought I was confused. But no, just tired. Not of the baby or of the amount of work required to keep her fed, clean and out of trouble. That’s just exhausting work.I can get over that if I get a great dinner, a fabulous book to nod off to followed by a good night’s sleep.
It’s the whole darn parenting thing. So far the human race has done a pretty spectacular job of raising its own. There are not nearly as many polar bears or giraffes or sloths in the world as there are humans. Yet, at every step we (especially we who live in the urban nooks and crannies of the world) question, pontificate, hop off and on soap boxes and pretty much suck the juice of joy out of raising our brood. I did it too for a bit. As soon as I found out I was pregnant, I took to reading books on child raising with the same inexplicable enthusiasm I have had for reading manuals that come with electronics. The difference I quickly found out was that the manuals do have some useful advice. As for parenting books, I went from excitement to boredom with a brief stopover at irritation.
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If you stop at one or two there’s a chance you’ll be fine but if you read too many (as I shamefully confess I did), you’d find that the world of the parenting theorists goes round and round.
Here are some of the reasons why they are all pitched against each other and stop making sense after a while-
If your baby sleeps with you, you are raising a dependent child. If your baby sleeps in a crib, you are raising an insecure child.
If you let your baby “Cry it Out” in bed you are going to raise an insecure child. If you rock the baby to sleep he will never learn to self-soothe.
If you don’t respond immediately to the baby’s calls, your child will grow up distrustful. If you rush to her side when she calls, she will never learn to do things on her own.
If you breastfeed your baby until they are three (or five), you are running the risk of making the baby too clingy but if you don’t breastfeed them long enough only you are to blame for every infection they catch till they are 43.
If you vaccinate your kids, you are risking their health, if you don’t you are risking their health.
If you don’t praise them enough your kid will lack confidence but if you praise them too much, they will grow up with a sense of entitlement.
If you send them to early pre-school, you are impacting their learning abilities, if you don’t send them to early pre-school, how will they learn to socialize?
If you hand them rewards for good behavior they will work only for rewards never for inner happiness. If you don’t reward or acknowledge their efforts they will not be able to tell good behavior from bad.
If the kid throws a tantrum ad you reason with him, you are teaching him to negotiate. If your kid throws a tantrum, you have to show him who is the boss since negotiation is not a skill they are capable of understanding.
And the oldest one in the books-
Should you spare the rod (or a thump on the bum) and spoil the child or never take advantage of your size or authority!
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And I am a 10 month old mom!
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