When I was a new mom, my mom would give me advice and suggestions and I’d shake my head firmly.
“No, they say that you shouldn’t put babies to sleep on their stomachs. No, they say you shouldn’t use that type of baby carrier. No, they say…”
My mom, getting exasperated, would ask, “Who is ‘they’?”
“They,” I would repeat. “You know…the people who write the books and stuff.”
What my mother was trying to tell me now that I just now realize is that I was so scared of making mistakes as a parent that I was stifling my own instincts. If I didn’t know how to do something (say, help the baby stop crying), I’d look it up. I read books, I read blogs, I asked friends, I called the doctor. But I never just took a moment to breathe and think about what felt right to me.
Sometimes we don’t listen to ourselves nearly often enough. I know that was at least the truth for me. But even in other instances, like in launching my business or fixing up rough patches in my marriage, I didn’t give myself nearly enough credit. My instincts are pretty darn good. I can tell when someone’s lying, I can tell when my husband is speaking from hurt rather than anger and I know when my kids need a hug rather than a talking-to.
Listening to yourself requires that you have confidence in your own opinions. What’s simpler than that? It requires you to be mindful of all that you’ve learned and all that you can do.
As young mothers, we may not get too many people in our corner, telling us that they’re confident in us as parents. But it doesn’t matter because if we’re confident within ourselves, then all that other stuff doesn’t matter.
Agreed! I’ve finally learned to trust my instincts and follow my gut feeling more.
I’m probably your mom’s age, if not older. One thing my generation was blessed with was that our go-to parenting manual — the “they” we quoted most — as Dr. Spock, whose book about parenting started with the line “Trust yourself. You know more than you think.”
Naturally, I promptly forgot this when I had my second child 9 years after my first. Oh, the stress “they” cause! It wasn’t until my son was well into his toddler years that I, having come thiiiiiisssss close to a breakdown because I wasn’t living up to “their” expectations, finally decided to trust myself. And I learned Dr. Spock was right.
So glad you realized this early on, Tara. Motherhood is a whole lot more fun when you’re doing it for your kids, and not to satisfy “them”.