Reflections on parenting that contain no advice.
“What you should do is…”
How about you shut the…
“Oh yeah, I’ll definitely give that a go. Thanks.”
“Yeah, I know it’s hard, but as long as you…”
*Sigh*
I have this hypothesis that those who write parenting books about, “How to get your child to sleep on their own without ever interrupting your leisure time,” or, “How to make sure your child is always happy, without setting them up for a life of false expectations and emotional dissolution,” are those people who just so happened to have children who were prone to sleeping on their own or were, for whatever reason, always happy.
Now I can’t prove this, but I reckon there’s a kind of retrospective advice framework that we parents are prone to.
“Looking back, little Jimmy always slept through the night and it’s probably because of these 3 things I always did and I should probably make sure everyone else knows that this is the right way to do that whole sleep thing and, come to think of it, it wasn’t as trivial as 3 things I always did, no no, it was a formula. Yes — that’s it! My ‘guaranteed-to-work-if-you-do-it-exactly-like-this sleep’ formula’”
I’ve got to tell you. I find this to be a difficult situation to stomach. I’m 9 years and 3 kids deep into this journey and can only now just say with confidence,
I don’t need your formula. I need you to know what I’m going through and to care about that. That’s about it.
Our world has a wealth of parenting advice to give. What I’ve discovered I actually need are avenues to experience empathy.
I can unequivocally say that I have no tactical advice to give you about parenting. At best I have a few big picture themes that I think it’s probably a good idea that we all try and point towards? You know, stuff like, we do everything we can to show our kids unconditional love and help give them a framework of what it means to be a good human in today’s world. Other than that… who can be sure?
I suspect the reason we are all so quick to share with each other our parenting nuggets of wisdom is because we all have aspects in our parenting journey that are truly brutal. There’s something about parenting that bypasses our well formed and practiced defences and calls everything we thought we knew about ourselves into question.
It does stand to reason that if we can help each other out, then that is something we should definitely all be trying to do. My question is, what is actually helpful? Probably many things. Unsolicited advice on the “right” way to do x, y, or z? Probably not. Well, at least not for me.
So, all in all, I have nothing for you except anecdotes and wonderings that have been forged in the crucible that is a decade without sleep. And actually, that’s all I need from you as well.