Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Parenting and Instinct.

I remember in school often wishing that things would come easy, I'd watch my peers as they raced through schoolwork and wonder, "how do they do it?". It wasn't as though the schoolwork was particularly challenging, most of the time I understood it quite well, it just took me so long to focus and get anything done. It was that way with most things in my life, they just didn't come easy, things just were challenging. Peers were challenging. I saw my older sister make a great group of friends and I envied her wishing that would just happen for me, it didn't. As an adult I am still confounded as to how one really makes good close friendships. I was bullied, not to make light of it, so people weren't really flocking towards me asking to be my friend. All my life I so wanted something to just fall perfectly in my lap and just click.

Then something did. Something came to me and made sense to me, I got something and loved it, and I was good at it - for the most part. It's not that it was simple or easy, no it is hard, it's just that it came naturally - instinctively even.


I am not one to read a bunch of parenting books, so I didn't and I haven't. I am a pretty easy going person, maybe sometimes too easy going, and so I kind of just let things fall into place. I figured out my rhythm and just did what felt right to me. I didn't follow what it said in a book, or a blog, I followed what made sense to me. Most people would probably say I fall into the method of parenting called "attachment parenting" but honestly I'd just say my method is instinctive parenting. It came as second nature to me.

I was that kid who played dolls. I named my doll, I loved my doll, I would go to the thrift stores and buy tiny little sleepers for my little boy doll. I played with dolls until I was about 15, and even after that I would occasionally pick up my doll and hold him in my room as I sat in my bed doing homework or whatnot. I dreamed of motherhood. I could practically taste it. So, once it finally happened....I wanted to breath in every moment. My daughter was held a lot, close to my heart as the rhythm soothed her. She slept in a bassinet in our room until she was seven and a half months. She was my beautiful. She was my natural. She is what I did well.

I am by no means trying to say I am a perfect mom, or that my way is the only way. I am trying to say that for once I felt at home and comfortable with my ability. I knew what I needed to do to take care of my little baby's needs, and I did it well and smoothly.

I am an observer of my child, I am a student of my child, I watch her and learn her ways as she goes about her day. I figure out her cues and I watch her take in and absorb the world around her. I don't dictate play or routine, I also don't let her parent herself, I just figure out her needs and her signs for those needs and meet them in a way that is natural. I don't push my wants upon her, that doesn't help anything as she is such a strong willed little lady already, I observe her behaviour and mood and set a pace that makes sense for the day.

She is my natural.

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