I've been in the parenting arena for around three and a half years, and as a reader, I've explored all kinds of literature on child-rearing. There are as many methods, and programs being sold out there as there are parents with opinions in Western nations. And so many of them are conflicting! Attachment Parenting. Tiger Parenting. Co-sleep, NEVER co-sleep, breast is best, formula is fine. Let him cry it out. Crying it out will leave your child a damaged shell of a human being with no hope of ever having an ordinary, fulfilling human relationship, and dead gorilla eyes, unless you A) give birth naturally, B) breast feed exclusively until the kid can write an annotated, sourced essay on why you really need to stop breast-feeding him and C) buy my book on the only right way ever to raise a baby.
It is great that all these resources are available to parents who may or may not have had much contact with young children. I mean, lets be honest: babies are scary. For everyone. With the obvious exception of the childless, there isn't an obstetrician, or neonatal nurse on the planet who didn't have a mild panic attack the first time they were handed their own little bundle of joy, and these people have years of higher education focused on nothing BUT little bundles of joy!
But with all the various methods, advice from Mom and Grandma, and half-baked semi-literate forum posts spouting half understood second-hand expert opinion floating around out there, how on earth is Average Joe Mom or Dad supposed to sort truth from truth-that-was-accurate-before-we-knew-that-washing-your-hands-after-taking-a-dump-would-prevent-illness?
I mean, obviously you have to take any information with a grain of salt. Do your own research, form your own opinions. But why is it that once you've found a method, or opinion that jibes with your own feelings about parenthood do you somehow always end up feeling worse about your own parenting?
To give a little perspective, lets use the Booger Pile as an example. Just before she was born, I was given a copy of Your Baby and Child by Penelope Leach. Leach is a proponent of Empathic Parenting, and I just soaked up her words. She made me want to understand my baby, and figure out what she wanted so I could give it to her each and every time, creating a happy, well-cared-for infant as well as a relaxed, confident me. And I have to give credit where credit's due. The Booger Pile was an exceedingly easy infant who grew into a confident and charming toddler. She's smart as a whip, and even with her tantrums, and sometimes obstinate behavior, she's really an easy child to love.
Unfortunately, any parent knows, it can be harder sticking with any one parenting method than sticking to whatever fad diet Jenny Craig's schilling this month. As my beautiful baby grew up, I've tried all kinds of different methods and bits of advice on her, with mixed results, including even, yes, the dreaded Evil Cry it Out. I was trying to wean her away from co-sleeping with that one, and it lasted about forty five minutes before I gave up and took her for a cuddle in the bed we shared until October of this year. And before anyone decides to flame me about it, my own conscience has had me wondering multiple times if I caused her shyness by walking away all those times her crying got to be a little too much to handle.
Even when I'm following my own preferred method to the letter, I still wonder about potential contradictions. Leach says allow your child to suck her fingers. The Other Half screeches that you can take away a pacifier but you can't take away a thumb. Leach says swaddle your child for the tactile comfort and womb-like feeling around her limbs. Darcia Narvaez believes swaddling will render your infant catatonic, and impede growth as her systems "shut down for self-preservation" after being "exhausted" by being left to cry it out.
And then along comes Dr. Peter Gray telling me about children from islands in the South Pacific who play free range close to where their older siblings go to school, amid miriad dangers such as matches, machetes, the unpredictable South Pacific ocean, and HIV-infested gibbon monkeys for all I know without an injury, squabble, or care in the world, and isn't that something compared with our own needy, phobic, attention whore Western children.
FFFFFF-WHA?
So all that work I put into being an "Empathic Parent", teaching my daughter that her needs will be met on demand means nothing because I don't consider Coke and eight hours of TV a need? My kid has temper tantrums, and meltdowns. Often. She's three, and the coolest thing in the world to her involves throwing maple tree seeds off a stair case, and yelling 'hey-copter! hey-copter!' She has simple emotions, and basic reactions. She may demand my attention (when i haven't given it to her freely in the first place, which is my own fault), and she may whine, and according to Free Range parenting, it's all because I don't kick her outside and lock the door behind me.
Forgoing the obvious argument that I don't live on a small island in the South Pacific, and there's something outside my front door populated by heavy chunks of rapidly moving metal which have probably killed more children in the last year than the entire population of said island, it's still a ridiculous comparison to make. Any child growing up in a semi-rural environment, with peers within safe walking distance is going to be able to be independent and autonomous at a young age. 80% of Canadians live in urban centers and it is simply not feasible to apply free range methodology to these children. At least not the younger ones for sure. For my Booger Pile, playing without direct adult supervision is limited to when I go downstairs with a load of laundry, and will be for quite a while unfortunately.
But that's the thing. As much as I would love to take the best part of every parenting theory out there and apply them to my own child, there will always be one more waiting around some dark corner to jump out and make me feel like a Social Services case for all that I've been doing or not doing as the case may be. It's impossible.
Which is why I will be developing my own parenting method. It's called Mammalian Parenting and ascribes to the theory that we've been doing something right for around 3 million years now, so lets not overthink the issue, because when we make something too complicated, (writers of Inception, I'm looking at you) We Always Fuck it Up. And if you're in any doubt your child is truly yours...give her a good licking. You know. Just to make sure.
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