The gentle flow of good advice that flows to me in my role as a parent of young children.
Whether it’s social media, experts or opinion leaders who claim to have cracked the code on everything from picky kids to potty training and the right way to deal with defiant age.
I could suck it all in and suffocate along the way. If I wanted to.
Because we live in a world where attitudes and expectations about how to be a good parent are as ubiquitous as the oxygen we breathe.
Social media is overflowing with perfect pictures of happy children and generous parents who always have time for both organic packed lunches and well-kept potted plants. Self-proclaimed prophets and influencers.
Even in close relationships, grandparents, friends and colleagues can be ready with well-intentioned advice, which has the common feature that they are usually excellent for the adviser himself, but not necessarily for the recipient.
The result? A generation of parents who run themselves down in the pursuit of being “good enough.”
The other day Nordjuyske carried an interview with psychologist Karen Wichmann. She experiences more and more clients who come to her with symptoms of burnout, and it is often parents of young children who are badly affected, she says.
Due to the massive flow of information, they have become disconnected from their own gut feeling and are afraid of harming their children.
– Parents today encounter a great many attitudes about how to be good parents. Attitudes that stick in all directions and which can be difficult to accommodate without losing yourself, says Karen Wichmann.
Losing yourself as a parent is a really bad idea. Both for yourself and your child. But perhaps the solution to the problem is so simple that it has been right in front of us all along.
Because what if we do something as simple as stop and listen to ourselves? Following our own common sense and intellect and not all the external noise we are constantly bombarded with.
The many “good” tips.
Because who knows your child better than yourself, and who says that you have to let yourself be controlled and dictated by other people’s expectations and exhortations? No. And if you do that, you waive your own responsibility.
That slippery slope is now revealing itself.
Being a good parent is not about perfection, but about love, care and presence. It can neither be measured nor weighed. And reason, the inner voice, call it what you will, develops only through experience, not by following one one size fits all-manual.
The truth is that as parents we already have the best qualifications to be the parent our children need. Because we – and no one else – know what is right for our children and for our family.
Whether it concerns outbursts of anger in the supermarket, sleep constellations or habits.
It is time to regain confidence in ourselves as parents. We must take on that responsibility.
It’s our damned duty.
2024-09-22 04:02:46
#secret #good #parenting #front
