It seems like a reassuring thing to say to a new mother. It’s an empowering statement, “you’ll know best”. We are fed the idea that we will just feel it if something is off. We are given the go-ahead to trust in our gut, even if we hadn’t been trusted with it before.
With matters of motherhood, above all else, we will be right, not only because our instinct will tell us — but because we will have been given the right to be right by everyone else. In this one aspect of life, not only do we have the universal approval to know best, but the pressure to meet that expectation.
I Didn’t Have “It”
I had no idea my son had tongue-tie and I ignored the signs up until I noticed his ribs poking through his skin one morning as I got him dressed.
The fact he hadn’t gained weight for weeks as an infant did not worry me because my child smiled a lot and waved his arms and legs around the entire time he would be awake. This kid had and continues to have, a tonne of energy.
So naturally, I felt guilty as hell in retrospect about brushing off my Health Visitor when she suggested something might be wrong with my son. The mother’s instinct everybody talks about was absent during the first 4 months of my son’s life in this regard, and everybody trusted in it when I told them, “I think he’s fine, look at how happy he is!”
I don’t think I have ever felt less deserving of a person. I have always struggled with imposter syndrome because of my low self-esteem, I still get it because of the career choices I made to quit my job and become a writer — something I have always thought was too ambitious of a role for me.
But to question my own ability to parent, and not just in your everyday kind of way, really shook my insides.
I couldn’t feel more of a failure. Not only did my brain reach the wrong conclusions, so did the science of instinct which is supposed to be in the core of my body, beyond consciousness.
Conflict of Instinct
I do extensive research about my methods of parenting in the various aspects — with food, discipline, sleep routines, coping with feelings, etc. I base my decision on the information I have ingested and how my child is, as well as how I am as an individual — and I involve my gut a lot.
My husband and I almost always go along with my methods of parenting first, no matter the topic. This is because we play into the idea that a mother knows best. And in many instances, this is true, but maybe not because of our instinct, but rather because the mother typically spends more time with the child and has already taken the time to trial and test out her methods. Basically, the rule of thumb is to go with whatever the main caregiver wants first, and while this may not be right for everyone, this is simply what we do.
This isn’t to say that the other parent shouldn’t be given the opportunity to cultivate his or her parenting skills, however. Not only can this help the other parent grow in confidence as a parent and adult, but it enables a special bond to be created with the child.
For example, my husband put a stop to my way of trying to get our son to eat his meals and stop being fussy because it just wasn’t working. After a certain period of time of him implementing his own way of doing things, which was firmer and stricter than I would’ve liked, I started to see some changes in my son and how he would sit down to eat the entire plate of food in front of him.
Now, Andriel looks forward to sitting down next to his parents and mostly eats his entire plate, including the veg. My husband was right, and I was wrong — at least for a period of time (because no one knows the future and kids are unpredictable!)
But my husband didn’t say “I told you so”. He didn’t discredit me as a mother, even if I did question my own decision making. He understood that being wrong is not a bad thing, and also, that I wasn’t “wrong” to begin with. Some things work, and some things don’t work for our children. And some things work for a while and then need to be changed. And that’s OK.
Parenting, while continuous, is flexible.
Lowering Expectations Is Empowering
I have this constant need as the main caregiver to simply know what to do and get it right — especially after all the research I do on many aspects of parenting. But the thing is, it is only because of my own expectations that we get upset when things don’t work out. We paint a picture of how things will go, and when they don’t go our way, we self-criticise.
Recently, I have been struggling to make the decision of whether to send our son to daycare.
Because of the recent lockdowns, I feared that he wasn’t getting enough social stimulation and he needed to spend more time with other children. We decided to send him to a local nursery two mornings a week.
But that wasn’t my only reason for wanting to send him there. I also needed more time to really step up my game as a writer, begin marketing myself and really work on my book.
But I’m tired of questioning myself, and since taking the road to self-care in order to be a better mother and person, I decided that my reasons were as good as any to send Andriel to daycare at the age of 27 months.
It has only been a few weeks, and so far, he does not look forward to going there. I feel in fact he has become shier and clingier than usual. This makes me question once again whether what I am doing is right, and whether the caregivers at the centre are doing right by my son.
I’m ready to assign blame and judge because this is what we do as people growing up in today’s society.
But I have to remember that it will solve nothing. I need to readjust my expectations and remind myself that everything takes time and that obstacles are all part of the journey, including my son’s settling in time at daycare.
He will get there because he is a strong and sociable little boy. He will be fine because he will still have an abundance of love at home waiting for him when he gets back and throughout the rest of the week. But I cannot decide how and when he will be running happily into nursery in the mornings — that’s a picture I need to let go of, but treasure if it happens.
Sometimes, it is our expectations that need change, not our circumstances. We have to be OK with hiccups in parenting. Rather, we need not see them as hiccups, but as part of the process of bringing up children. After all, we are only human.
Takeaway
Photo by Andrae Ricketts on Unsplash
I believe in a mother’s instinct, but I don’t believe in the expectation that it will be there when we need it. If that expectation isn’t met then we will be more than ready to assign blame, and it won’t help us grow as parents or as individuals. In fact, I think that the constant need to meet these expectations is what causes us to feel like a failure at some point in our lives.
Instead, I recommend a more supportive plan, where advice can be handed out without coming across as all-knowing and dismissive of the parent. We can learn not to feel offended at others’ suggestions in the same way that others can learn not to be judgemental. I advise that others do get involved in taking care of kids, in a non-judgemental “I-told-you-so” way when the main interest is that of the child — not of themselves.
Most importantly, we have to learn that mistakes are normal, and most of the time, they’re not life-threatening. We are all human after all, and that makes us susceptible to countless errors over the course of time. In modern parenting, most parents are learning not to scold their kids when they make mistakes because it’s detrimental to their confidence building. We should take that same approach with ourselves and other adults.
So, let’s cut ourselves a little slack, and lower that pressure to get it right. Nobody is born a parent with experience.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: Xavier Mouton Photographie on Unsplash