It seems to me that today, everyone wants to define your parenting style in a few quick words and stick you in a box. Are you an attachment parent? A tiger mother? An anti-vaxxer? A helicopter parent? Homeschooler? Home birther? (I don't think birther is actually a word unless it's referring to people who are still trying to turn back time to 2008 and change the election, but I needed an -er word.) There's probably more, but my newborn eats every two hours and my brain is sludge, I call this period of life acute Mommy brain. Sidenote: there's nothing cute about it.
Of course, people who adhere to any of these ideals with total unquestioning devotion tend to be, in my humble opinion, more than a little scary. They are actually similar in many ways to cult followers, regardless of whether they worship at the altar of extended breast feeding (hello, lactivists, please don't storm my blog!) or the cry-it-out method. Thankfully, I've also discovered that these glassy-eyed cult followers are either largely imaginary, or remarkably few in number everywhere except the internet. Pretty much every parent I know is trying their best with every decision they make, but instead of adhering religiously to any subgroups' standard, they're plucking a little from column A, a little from column B, and a touch out of basket C. Of course, there's so many parenting decisions, eventually you get to jar 3423ZZ, but that's another blog post.
As I am a practitioner of this particular "method" and the term "seat of my pants parent" makes me sound like I don't care about the outcome, I have dubbed myself a "buffet-style parent." This combines my love of eating with my love for my children and family. If I could throw in a reference to sleeping, this term would encompass pretty much my whole heart.
Buffet-style is a simple philosophy. All your options are before you...take what you like, leave the rest for other people. Try new stuff. If you don't like it, go back and try another option. It's all good, but that doesn't mean it's all good for you in particular. It's okay, have three desserts. Okay, so maybe that last thing only applies to me at real buffets as well as parenting, but the beauty of the system is it's customizable, so that works.
Nursing, saving money on formula and boosting immunity? Sure, load up my plate! Then I'll go back in the line a few months later and realize giving the occasional bottle means I can sleep more than two hours at a time and dad can take a turn. Wait, I'll take a little of that too please! Co-sleeping is like a seafood dish to me, lots of people love it, I am not one of them, I'll skip that station. And of course, there's the healthy dose of vegetables no one really likes but you eat them to be healthy, or at least feel better about what else is on your plate. These can be represented with actual vegetables. The possibilities are endless!
If the game changes, you can change with it. When I was in the hospital, my mother in law said the kids were obsessed with Spongebob Squarepants. She said (correctly) that I had said earlier that my kids weren't allowed to watch Spongebob (because studies show its not good for preschoolers), and asked when that changed. I said "Oh, about 36 weeks into this pregnancy." Soon, when I have my feet under me again, Spongebob will go back to the depths of the sea until either my kids are old enough to be in his target demographic, or something else renders me completely incapable of parenting without a crutch. But it's all good. A month or two of Spongebob hasn't destroyed their developing brains. A few months of gummi prenatal vitamins instead of the iron-laden puke-inducing prenatals during pregnancy won't land my kid in my basement until age 40. In short, the only hard core philosophy I prescribe to with day-to-day duties is that flexibility is the key to a happy and healthy life. I'm gung ho about flexibility, considering I used to be the least flexible person on planet earth.
In many ways, I'm still inflexible, and that doesn't just refer to my performance in a yoga class (I'm just kidding, I would never attempt to take yoga in front of other people). I still have a rigid personality and I have very clear ideas of right and wrong. But I've learned that if I'm going to be intense and hard core in some ways, the only way to survive is not to sweat the small stuff. I want my children to grow up to be good people, good citizens, and kind. Whether I manage to raise them to these ideals or not makes the early years of pooping in cloth or disposables kinda pale in comparison.
And, despite what the parenting "dogmas" preach, most of the day to day decisions are small stuff. Its the character building, the loving, and learning we do with and for our children that actually matters. So let's focus on that, and leave all the other stuff on the buffet line, for each individual parent to taste or ignore at will.
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