As a first time Mum, I have no idea what I’m doing. So, I’m on a lot of parenting and Mum pages on Facebook because I love to read about how other people survive motherhood and teach their own tiny humans the important things in life. Sometimes it’s extremely wholesome, but more often than not I find myself disappointed in the responses, I thought it was all about Mums supporting Mums.
People are so quick to tell each other that they’re doing something wrong, but are far less willing to discuss how and why this conclusion was reached.
If you feel comfortable enough to tell me that I’m going wrong, then please do tell me why and how to go about things better. Educate me.
There’s no set guide for raising children. We are all different, our children are all different and our circumstances are all different. We are all just fumbling our way through trying to do what’s best for our children in the only ways we know how.
So let’s support each other. How experts say that we should help our children/keep them safe changes so regularly it’s almost impossible to keep up.
So instead of attacking each other, questioning each other’s ability to parent. We should be helping each other. Instead of “omg that is so unsafe!” try “hey, I don’t know if you’re aware but actually there was a new study which has shown that xyz is a much better way of doing this. I don’t mean to overstep, but I wouldn’t have known if no one had told me!”. It’s helpful and non-judgemental.
No one critiques our parenting quite like ourselves. So if a parent has been brave enough to come out and say “hey I need some help”… just don’t be a knob. It’s surprisingly easy!
I aim to practise gentle parenting with TinyHuman which is a fairly new concept for me. My parents are fantastic but never really subscribed to a “type” of parenting. So I want to know more about it, so that I can do it to the best of my ability.
Last night I sat watching the comments section unfold on a post in a gentle parenting group. This lady had reached out for support following an incident with her child.
She explained that they had been out for a walk and her child had wandered dangerously close to the road. She shouted at her child, and the shock of being shouted at caused them to spin around and ultimately saved them from being hit by a car. So the purpose of this post was that the Mum was expressing that she had felt horrendous for having to shout at her child, and wanted to know how others would have handled it.
While some expressed they could understand why she felt bad, but that she did what was necessary. Others instantly told her that clearly gentle parenting wasn’t for her, and slated her for finding herself in that situation.
To me, this felt unnecessary. Our children model themselves on the behaviour they see. Practising gentle parenting is all well and good, but not if you’re teaching your children that they can speak to others in such a way.
With mental health becoming so widely talked about, you’d think that people would take more care in how they treat others.
Digressing slightly, but I have made it my new thing to openly compliment strangers. I myself acutely aware that I would see someone wearing an amazing outfit and I’d mutter under my breath to whoever I was with that I thought it was awesome.
One day I asked myself why I did that. Why would I not share that information? So I challenged myself to start complimenting strangers. I cannot count the amount of times that I have heard the words “I really needed to hear that today, thank you!”. It’s a little thing, but it makes people happy and in turn I know I’ve done a good thing.
As parents we’re so desperate to raise good people… so let’s start by being good people.
As always, if you are in need of support but are unsure where to look, you can find some links that I have found useful here.
