THE PARENTING MANIFESTO PROJECT
From Elizabeth at Half Changed World:There's a Jewish tradition that you're supposed to carry
a slip of
paper with a message in each pocket. On one side, you carry "You were
created in God's image" and on the other side, you carry "You came from
dust, and to dust you shall return." When you get depressed you look at
the first, and when you get cocky you look at the second.
The parenting version of this is that on one side you carry the start
of Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care: "Relax. You
know more than you think you do," and on the other side you carry the
start of Philip Larkin's This be the verse: "They
fuck you up, your mom and dad/ They may not mean to, but they do."
Whatever
you do as a parent, someone will tell you that you're doing it
wrong. This became very clear to me when my older
son was a newborn
and we were given two baby books: What to Expect The First
Year and The Baby Book.
These two books agree that you should use a car seat and that
breastmilk is the ideal food for babies, and disagree on just about
everything else. Eisenberg says that if you let your
child co-sleep at
all, he'll never learn to sleep on his own. Sears
says that it's cruel
to expect a child to sleep by himself. Pretty soon,
I figured out that
neither of them knew my child as well as I did. (Our
boys coslept as
infants, then transitioned to their crib without trauma.)
This doesn't mean that everything you do will work out
right. Sometimes your best just isn't good enough,
or what you thought
was the best turns out in hindsight to look like a mistake. Be able to
step back and laugh at the situation. All you can
ever do is try
something, and see what happens. If it works,
great. If not, you try
something else. When you run out of things to try,
start over, because
sometimes what didn't work last time will work this
time. Some
strategies that were a total flop with my first child worked great with
my second. Parenting books are useful because they
give you new things
to try, not because they have all the answers.
Children aren't nearly as fragile as we sometimes
think. You
don't have to get it right 100 percent of the time, which is a good
thing, because none of us will. An abundance of love
will make up for
most other failings. When you screw up, don't be
afraid to admit it
and apologize.
No one can handle being on duty 24/7. Don't be
afraid to ask
for help when you need it. Help out other parents
even if they don't
ask for it. Give unsolicited compliments.
