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| Image by Elisa Nobe via stock.xchange |
Since learning I was pregnant with
my first baby almost two years ago, I’ve wondered what kind of mom I’d be. I
naively thought that by the time my baby was born, I’d have it all figured out.
After all, I did have nine months to research. And research I did! I began
reading article after article, blog after blog, trying to figure out how to be
the best mom I could. My goal, in essence, was to have a “Mommy Mission
Statement” written, notarized, and set in stone. In my mind, this mission
statement would guide all of my parenting decisions. If I ever became confused,
I could just refer back to my core set of beliefs about parenthood and they’d
essentially make the right choice for me.
I became obsessed. I read about the
Cry It Out method, and I agreed with some of its tenants. It made perfect sense
in my mind that if we reward crying with love and cuddles, babies will learn
that crying equates to attention. And who wants that!? But then I read about
some Eastern cultures that practice co-sleeping and pick up their babies at the
first little squawk. Their belief was that this helps children feel more secure
and confident. And I certainly wanted my baby to know that I’d always be there
for him, good or bad.
I read about spankings vs.
time-outs. I read about natural or attachment parenting vs. the Babywise
method. I learned how you should breastfeed exclusively until your baby turned
one and I read about how you should let your baby direct weaning and feed him
solids as soon as he showed interest. I
read that you shouldn’t use pacifiers if you are nursing, but that pacifiers
also seem to help prevent SIDS. For every situation no matter how
insignificant, I read about two, completely opposite methods of parenting. And
I agreed with something from both sides in nearly every case.
My Mommy Mission Statement was not
going well at all. Although I learned a great deal about everyone else’s
beliefs’ about the right way to parent, I still had no idea what kind of parent
I was going to be. I wasn’t sure what
I believed about parenting. And just
when I stumbled upon something I thought I could come to believe, I read
something else that completely contradicted it. And I thought I could believe
that too.
Labor and delivery rolled around as
it inevitably does, but I still had not figured this motherhood thing out. So I
kept reading. I hadn’t yet accepted the fact that there will always be two
opposite ways of doing things; or that one of my virtues and vices is the ability to see and agree with both sides. This was
useful when I had to write an argumentative essay in high school because I
could successfully argue for either side. It will also probably come in handy
when I have to mediate fights between children, but it’s really inconvenient
when I need to have a strong opinion on something. It made writing my mission statement
incredibly difficult.
Difficult as it was, I felt that
this endeavor was too important to quit on. So I kept on reading. I felt kind
of like Forrest Gump. I just kept on reading. And reading. And reading. And
reading. Until I just didn’t feel like it anymore. And so I stopped.
That point for me was this past month.
I did not give up on my mission statement. But reading wasn’t getting me there.
I’d read all I could. I read about me. What I,
as a parent, should do. Over and over again, I read about me. And the
question suddenly occurred to me, “When did parenting become about the
parents?”
When my sister and I were fighting, I don’t
remember my mom saying, ”Ok. Now, I’m an
attachment parent. What would an attachment parent do in this situation?” When my baby sister was born, my mom didn’t
say, “What sleep training method should I use?” And when her baby cried, my mom
didn’t think, “Oh no! If I pick her up now, I’ll
be teaching her that crying gets
attention and I’ll ruin her forever!”
My mom didn’t do any of those things.
What she did do was love us. She
listened to us. She got to know us. My mom recognized that she had three,
individual daughters. She knew and loved
each of us, and she let that guide her parenting choices. She didn’t parent
Mallary and Shaylee the same way she parented me, because she knew we were
different people and we would respond best to different things. My mom and
dad’s method of parenting wasn’t about them.
It was about us.
So after twenty-three months of
obsessing and researching, this realization has finally allowed me to begin
writing my Mommy Mission Statement.
“I am a parent committed to
raising a healthy, happy, responsible, and kind child. I will do this by being
a “child-focused” parent. I will get to know my child as an individual by
listening both to what he says, and what he doesn’t say. I will love him no
matter what. I recognize that when I have more children, each of them will be
different and as such will need different things. I believe this means there is
no one right parenting style and I believe that as I listen to, love, and get
to know my children, I will learn what type of parent each child needs. My
abundant love for them will allow me to be that parent.”
I didn’t end up with the clear cut,
notarized mission statement I wanted. It
won’t make decisions for me. It certainly leaves room for me to change my
mind. But it’s not about me. It’s about
my children. Don’t get me wrong. I definitely see value in being a self-aware
parent. How else will you recognize your mistakes and fix them? But I see more value in being aware of your
child and what they need. I’m not going to stop reading parenting articles. But
my goal is to make informed decisions based on what each of my children need
and not on what some scholar or parenting expert believes is best. After all,
they don’t know my child. I do. I believe the best type of parent is one whose
parenting decisions are more focused on their children than themselves. Those are the type of parents I had and that’s the type of parent I choose to be. That’s my Mommy Mission Statement.
Do you have a Mommy Mission Statement? What does/would it include?
