|
Parenting
1. Parenting is for Life
A
series that helps parents raise their children
Introduction
to this Page
| It
seems that so many people have trouble being parents; there seems
so much conflict in families. These pages are here to help you,
if you are a parent or a potential parent, to think
through some of the crucial issues in parenting
to try and minimise some of those problems.
This
particular page introduces you to the
idea of life-time parenting and sets down some
suggestions to help you being a parent from conception through
the early months of your child's life in this world. We hope you'll
find this framework for thinking helpful.
You
will find that the style of this and subsequent pages will be
‘bullet-point' style to separate out individual things for you
to think about, with plenty of white space between. Each individual
bit needs thinking about. |
|
Contents:
1.
A Lifetime of Parenting
•
awareness
that once a parent always a parent – changing roles throughout
life as a parent.
2.
A Breakdown in Parenting
•
awareness
that parenting breaks down if it's not started as early as possible.
3.
Parenting the Foetus
•
awareness
of how you can influence your baby in the womb for good.
4.
Parenting the Newborn Child
•
awareness
of your main tasks and the problems to be overcome together
in those early months.
5.
Do Talk!
•
an early
plea for you both to communicate with each other.
6.
Recap
| 1. A Lifetime
of Parenting |
| Here
is a concept to play with! Once you have conceived a child you
will be a parent for the rest of your life –
until either you or they die.
Why?
Because the definition of a parent is simply a father or a mother.
However old your ‘child' is, you are still a parent.
When
the child is an embryo in the womb, you are a parent-in-waiting.
When
they are born you are a parent-in-action.
When
they have left home and have a partner of their own, you are
a parent-in-support.
When
they have children of their own, you are still a parent-in-support,
now what we call a grand-parent.
|
|
Throughout
all these stages you are still a parent.
What
differs is the way you will express it.
- If
you are a mother carrying the foetus, your child is totally reliant
upon your body.
- When
it is just born it is totally reliant upon your care.
- In
its teenage years it starts ‘standing on its own two feet', declaring
its individuality, still needing your care but making more and more
of its own decisions.
- When
it leaves home it is completely reliant on itself, but will still
appreciate your presence in the background, there as a loving support,
as and when needed.
Oh
yes, parenting is more than just for some limited period.
Return
to top of page
| 2. A Breakdown
in Parenting |
Perhaps
you look at the world around you and see broken and dysfunctional families
where all of the comments above seem so alien.
Why
is that?
It
is because parents
don't realise that it is potentially for a lifetime and don't
realise that what they do in the earliest stages will affect the
later stages.
|
Thus
many modern parents offload their parenting responsibilities to others
– grandparents, baby-sitters, crèches, play-schools and so on
– anyone who will take the load of being a parent off the true parent.
And
what, so often, is the result? The child recognises that something is
missing but doesn't know what it is, and so their behaviour is skewed
and their ties to their parents are weak.
As
the years go by the child doesn't live as a child can live (and we'll
explain this in detail later on) and so when the pressures of peers
or of modern-mind-movers come on them, they break away from their parents
and separation is the name of the game for the rest of life.
Oh
yes, there will be contact but that is very different from a bonded
parent-child relationship.
Return to top of page
| 3. 'Parenting'
the Foetus |
Over
recent decades, research into the life of a foetus tells us that there
are links between child and mother as follows:
Chemical
or molecular links whereby the life of the
mother's body flows to the child
-
thus
the child can, for example, if the mother is on an excitement
rush, receive adrenaline, through the umbilical cord and
placenta.
|
|
Sensory
links whereby the actions of the mother
are picked up by the senses of the foetus
-
thus
a foetus will communicate by gently kicking at certain
stages, when it hears soothing music say, or violent sounds.
|
Emotional
links whereby the feelings of the mother
are conveyed to the child
-
thus
a foetus can sense the stress or calmness of the mother.
|
Various
psychologists have suggested, as a result of their research, that
there are real and strong communication links between the foetus and
the mother.
Thus,
if these things are so, then the 'aware mother' realises:
-
that
her child will receive ‘non-prescribed' drugs, say, that she may
use, even causing a dependency in the womb – to be avoided therefore,
So,
careful consideration of these things can determine the nature of
the environment within the womb before the child is born, which may
subsequently have consequences for the child once it is born.
For
instance singing soothing songs or playing restful music, which the
foetus picks up, has been shown to lull the child to sleep after it
has been born, when the same song is sung or same music played. There
are those who say these would have a soothing effect anyway, but the
links do seem observable – pre-natal and post-natal.
Singing,
it has been suggested, aids the expression of love and subsequent
bonding between mother and child. Such activities seem to aid awareness
in the baby, before and after birth, together with signs of enjoyment
and happiness even. The mothers soothing voice before and after birth
makes a link between womb and world.
Some
have suggested that such sounds and other forms of natural stimulation,
reaching the foetus in the womb not only sooth it but stimulate the
growth of brain cells (don't get too carried away with this!). Whereas
the newborn baby can react negatively to too much noise and stimulation,
so it is likely that the unborn child may also react negatively to
too much input.
Perhaps
the easiest thing to say is that your
unborn baby can be influenced by how well you feed, how you
balance the activities of your life so as not to get over-tired,
and your state of mind and emotions. Seeking
to maintain a wise balance in all these things means you are
seeking the best in both the way you communicate with your unborn
child, and the environment you are creating for them before
they arrive in their new world.
|
| EXERCISE:
If you are carrying a child, consider what things you can
do NOW to help your child as suggested above. Make a list
of those things and put it on the wall somewhere as a reminder.
|
Return
to top of page
| 4. Parenting
the Newborn Child |
Nutrition
and health education for new parents is now quite common and are beyond
the scope of these pages. All we simply wish to do here is make one
or two observations about those first couple of years following the
arrival of your child, which we hope you will find useful.
a)
Clarifying your roles
Your role as parents in the early days, months
and years of your new child's life is to include the following:
- providing
nutrition to sustain your child and aid its physical development,
- providing
clothing, a home, care and protection i.e. everything necessary
to create a safe environment for this tiny defenceless being,
- providing
care and concern and love for your child that makes them, from
the earliest days of awareness, conscious of being loved (we'll
say more about this in subsequent pages).
|
b)
A Need for Togetherness
With
your first child comes a sense of awesome adventure. You've
never done this before. This little creature is entirely dependent
on us! How do we do this? How do we
cope with broken nights? How do we cope with
this total and absolute change in our lives by the arrival of
this little one?
The
answer has to be ‘togetherness'.
From
the moment you arrive home with your new baby (assuming you
have her/him in hospital) you are suddenly aware that initially
at least, YOU are all that stands between life and death for
your child. It is down to you! Awesome!
At
this point there are two tendencies
to be overcome which you need to be aware of:
You,
the new mother, are totally taken up in a new
world of baby feeding, care etc. and it's very easy to let your
husband/partner become the third member of the family. You mustn't
let that happen.
You,
the new father,
see that your wife/partner is just getting on capably (it
seems) with looking after your new child and because she may
be breast feeding, feeding is solely her prerogative. Beware
two things:
|
Worst
case scenario!
This
is not to be pessimistic and depressing; this is just to face the realities
that face new families. There are two particular possibilities you need
to be aware of:
i)
Some mothers do go into post-natal depression.
•
Get help from
the professionals!
ii)
Tiredness is very common, especially when you are up feeding
your child two or three times a night.
•
This is very
common; it bears repeating! Many mothers look back and wonder how
they coped. They did because they had to but it wasn't easy!
•
Tiredness in
the middle of the night, when the baby is crying and you can't seem
to get him/her to sleep, means stress. Stress means you get desperate
in the early morning hours and it is not unusual to feel like throwing
your baby. Now this is not being over dramatic; it happens!
•
This is where
togetherness comes in! You need to be aware of this and you need to
talk it through before it every gets to this. The man may feel he
needs his sleep to be able to work the next morning, but sometimes
there are things that are more important than sleep – the health and
well being of your partner and your child.
•
There needs to
be an agreement that when you, probably the mother, are feeling at
the end of your tether in the middle of the night, your partner will
step in when you wake him, and take over until the baby is settled
and you have time to calm down and rest.
EXERCISE:
If you have a new born baby, make a small table with two columns:
Dangers to Avoid and How we can over-come
and note down things from above. |
Return
to top of page
Depending
where you are in your relationship together you will be aware of your
need to talk. Elsewhere on this site you will find materials about the
need to talk together:
- In the
“Marriage Preparation” section
- where talking
together is shown to be a vital element for both of you
- In the
“Avoid Divorce” section
- where couples
in trouble have to face the fact that they have stopped communicating.
Talking
together can be a minefield if you haven't come to the place
where you are willing to compromise your ideas, and no more so than
in the case of parenting.
You
need to talk together:
- in
the earliest day of your child's life sharing
your feelings and concerns,
-
as your child grows so
you can agree strategies for care, training, discipline etc.,
-
together in
the teenage years – when your teenager seems an alien and you
wonder how to cope,
-
in the separating from family years – as you agree how to cope
with empty-nest feelings,
-
in the older support years – as you anguish over the problems
your adult kids have!
You
need to talk!
|
| EXERCISE:
Identify when in a week you and your partner can make time to
sit down together and talk without interruption. Decide things
you specifically want to talk about. Do it! |
Return
to top of page
Look
back over what we've considered on this first page:
1.
A Lifetime of Parenting
•
awareness that
once a parent always a parent – changing roles all the time, but
tremendous opportunities to be there for your children.
2.
A Breakdown in Parenting
•
awareness that
parenting breaks down if it's not started as early as possible
3.
Parenting the Foetus
•
awareness of
how you can influence your baby in the womb for good.
4.
Parenting the Newborn Child
•
awareness of
your main tasks and the problems to be overcome together
in those early months
5.
Do Talk!
•
an early plea
for you both to communicate with each other
Why
do so many people have a hard time of it?
Because they haven't thought through some of these things you've
read about on this page.
| If
it's not that (and it probably will be!) it's that they
have been unwilling to take hold of the responsibility of
being a parent. It costs you your life to
be a good parent, but the good news is that we're designed
to make a good job of it.
The
husband/partner who wants to remain a self-centred individual,
still doing the things he did when he was single, just hasn't
clued in to life!
Being
a husband/partner means joining yourself to your
wife/partner in far more ways that sex. It means being willing
to give up yourself for her.
Being
a father means far more that just being the main
one bringing in the bread; it means being there as a primary
influence in your child's life. |
 |
On
the next page, we'll look at the possibilities of the wonderful things
you can achieve by being a caring, thinking, committed parent. Go for
it!
Return
to top of page
|
Sunday Services
Back to Parenting Contents Page