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Posted by AA on November 11, 2002 at 03:50:47:
Reading through some of the old message has cause me to give alot of thought to parenting lessons I have learned and I though I would try to share some of the basic and most transferrable guidelines I have come to live by. First of all - seek advice and seek it often. I applaud all of you for seeking advice and guidance on your parenting questions. I wish I had had sources outside of my family and friends who listen to annonymous questions and share honest advice and stories with me. I would have felt more confident as a mother without the critical involvement of a family which has never stopped seeing me as the "baby sister." Second - trust your instincts. You know your baby best of all. If you are concerned about something - follow-up on it. Don't be afraid to push for your baby's best health. Be honest with yourself about things you can or should change, etc and do what is best for your child. Third - Follow your mother's, sister's, friend's advice only as long at it fits your child's personality or your own. You don't have to parent according anyone else's schedule and your child doesn't have to keep up with or ahead of the child next door. Fourth - Neither copy your parents, friends, or siblings - nor completely abandon all they taught you - find the best strategies to adopt and adapt them to develope your own natural parenting techniques. Fifth - Love your babies and children as naturally as you can - trust your heart to give you the right answers most of the time. Even when you have to be firm, you can always let them know that you love them. Sixth - Be a parent your child can trust in every situation. I never "snuck" out on my children before leaving them with sitters or at daycare, nor did I ever stay gone longer than expected - and my children never gave me temper tantrums at separations. Letting them know you are trustworthy in that way will build towards trust when they are teens as well. Seventh - Let your children grow according to their own natural timing and personalities - Sometimes the ones who bloom later bloom more completely than the ones which bloom early. There are more examples than I can list - but consider that longer periods of crawling have been linked to higher math scores in later years - late talkers have been linked to deeper thinkers - etc... It's not a race - by the time they are 18 they are all pretty equal. If there are more, I can't think of them right now - but there are mountains of books giving advice to parents. Alot of it is good advice - but not every bit of advice is for every child or every parent - learn to sift through it all and find the best for your family. Truth, love, compassion and structure are the best tools in raising children. I hate using the word "discipline" too much because true discipline is in the foundations and structures of our lives - not in the punishments that the word "discipline" implies in the mind of many people today. I never know when I will be online or how often. Sometimes I am gone for months - sometimes I post lots of things in a few days. So I just wanted to write something that might offer general help to those who find it along the way. God bless you and all your little ones AA
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