A word on "parenting styles"

 

 I have the privilege and honor to be responsible for the future of this little face.

Hair included.

I've heard lots of things about attachment parenting, RIE method parenting, Euro-style parenting...

What about just being good, honest, loving, and respectful parents?

I've never taken the time to identify what "type" of parents we are to Liam. We're his parents. We're here to love and support and respect him.

Yes. Respect the toddler.

I'm not going to say that there is a right way to bring up your child into adulthood. I will, however, say that there is most assuredly, a wrong way.

His needs and feelings, no matter how fleeting or extreme or the manner in which they are expressed, matter.

They matter to him, and thus they matter to his father and I. This won't change when he's older. I hear "Just try to feel that way when he's a teenager."

I'm not stupid. I know it's going to be difficult sometimes, for us and for him.

My mother was a single mom, who did the best that she could. She has her own set of issues, and I'd be lying if I said that they didn't have an impact on the type of parent she was. I was around my maternal grandmother a lot growing up after my parents' divorce. A woman who, while she loved us, was not of the mindset that children deserve respect. We (my sister and I) weren't allowed to freely walk around her home. We had to sit on the couch and do absolutely nothing, if we weren't doing housework. We couldn't take naps. As teenagers she would often send us to bed at 8:30. She regularly read our diaries, stalked our school habits, and refused to let us have friends over. We were allowed 5 minute showers and she would rarely let us shave our legs (teenagers, people.) She would shame me about boyfriends and when the time came, sex. I once had UTI in high school, which girls get from time to time, and she told me in front of my sister "You know you can only get those from dirty sex."

Nice. I remember her once covering up the mirrors in our room because "you guys look at yourselves too much."

We were teenage girls! Are you kidding me? Still, they insist it was "best for us" and "built character" and I'm sure she'd insist that if she hadn't done those things I'd be an axe murderer by now. Not so. As a result, I grew up feeling like my feelings didn't matter, and to feel ashamed and embarrassed of my changing body and hormones.

I don't know if it was a generational thing, or what. But I can absolutely say that this is the wrong way to do things. I still have problems that I can trace back to feeling like I was less of a person as a child and a young adult.

I think that starting when your child is a baby, you need to respect them. Respect that they are their own people and they won't feel how you want them to feel all the time, and that your role as a parent or parental figure is to help them get through awkward times, not punish them for being "difficult."

Thankfully I had a very positive maternal figure in my best friend's mother. Jamie helped me through a lot, and to this day I call her Mom. 

My son and daughter will have "troublesome" times as young children. They'll rebel as teens. They'll have sex at some point. My daughter will one day ask about birth control. I welcome these times. I welcome the opportunity to be for my children the positive adult role model that I didn't have in my family growing up. My family did the best they could, absolutely. But isn't it our job to do better, and to honor and respect our children simply because they are people? All "methods" aside?