I followed a link to this article, written by Dr Stephen Cowan (a pediatrician for 25years) and I just had to share it - sometimes as parents (and humans) we get caught up in comparing ourselves and our children to others, or get bamboozled by the barrage of information spoon fed to us by the media. Take the time to read the article (link to original here).***Images are of my own family.
11 Things I wish every parent knew:
1. Growth and development are not a race.
These
days we’re in such a rush to grow up. In our mechanized,
post-industrialized world of speed and efficiency, we've forgotten
that life is a process of ripening. To get good fruit, you need to
nourish strong roots. Pay attention to the ground that supports your
child’s life: Go for a walk with your child, eat with your child, play
together, tell him a story about your experience as a child.
2. Creating family traditions encourages strong roots and a healthy life.
This
takes time and practice. Personal traditions are sacred because they
promote exchanges that strengthen bonds of love and intimacy and build
the kind of confidence that will carry your child through this world.
3. We grow in cycles.
There
is a rhythm and pulse to each child’s life – sometimes fast and
intense, sometimes slow and quiet. Just as each spring brings a renewed
sense of appreciation for life, each stage of a child’s life is a time
of new discovery and wonder. After all, learning is not just a process
of accruing information. It's the process of transforming our ideas, and
sometimes this requires forgetting in order to see with fresh
eyes. Some children will take a step backward before making a giant leap
forward.
Growing in cycles means that we
don’t get just one chance to learn something. The same lesson will offer
itself up to us again and again as we pass through the seasons of our
life. There is deep forgiveness in this way of understanding childhood, which I find takes the pressure off parents to “get it right” the first time.
4. Encouragement is not the same as indulgence.
We
are not in the business of raising little kings and queens. Kings don’t
do well in our society. Recent studies have shown that indulgence
actually weakens your child’s powers to survive, deflating motivation
and diminishing feelings of success.
Encouragement
means putting courage in your child, not doing things for him. Create a
supportive context that will open up a path without pushing your child
down it. Unconditional love is the scaffolding that encourages your
child to take chances, to experiment, and to fail without judgment.
Sometimes being an encouraging presence in your child’s life means
standing a little off in the background, there to offer a compassionate
hand when circumstances call for it, but trusting in his innate
ingenuity.
There is spaciousness in
encouragement. Indulgence, on the other hand, limits freedom by
inflating a child’s sense of entitlement and reducing the patience
needed to work through obstacles when he doesn't instantly get his way.
Indulgence leads to small-minded thinking.
5. Pushing your buttons is a spiritual practice, and children are our spiritual teachers.
You
don’t need an expensive spiritual retreat to become enlightened. Your
little sage-teacher is right in front of you, offering you true wisdom
free of charge!
Children watch our every move
when they're little, studying our inconsistencies as they try to figure
out this crazy world. And they will call you on it. When a child pushes
your buttons, remember: they are your buttons, not hers. Take the
time to listen to what your child is trying to teach you. One of the
secrets of parenthood is our willingness to transform ourselves out of
love for our child. When you're willing to look at your buttons, you
open up a deeper self-awareness that is transformative for both you and
your child.
6. A symptom is the body’s way of letting us know something has to change.
Good medicine asks what is the symptom trying to accomplish?
rather than simply suppressing it. Our body has its own intelligence
and yet so much of pharmaceutical advertising tries to convince us that
there is something wrong with feeling symptoms. Much of my medical
training was focused on stopping symptoms as if they were the problem.
(This is like telling the body to shut up. It’s rude!) We don't trust
the body’s intelligence. We think too much and tend to be afraid of
feelings in our body.
But children have taught
me that a symptom like fever is actually not the problem. Whatever is
causing the fever may be a problem, but the temperature is simply the
body’s way of trying to deal with what’s happening.
Take,
for example, the child with a fever. What other symptoms does the child
have? If he is playful, you may not need to suppress the fever. It
means the body is trying to make metabolic heat to mobilize the immune
system. To help it do this, you can give warm (not cold) fluids so it
doesn’t dry out and nourishing foods like soups to fuel the fire.
7. Be prepared.
The one phrase from the Eagle Scout motto that stuck with me since I was a boy was Be prepared. This is a state of readiness that can be fueled by confidence or fear.
These
days I practice what I call “preparatory medicine” rather than
preventive medicine, so that getting sick is not seen as a
failure. Being healthy does not mean never getting sick. Life is a
journey of ups and downs and the growing child lives in a constant state
of flux. A resilient immune system is one that learns how to get sick
and get better. Living too clean a life robs us of the information
necessary to be fully prepared to recover.
Rather
than living in fear of illness, there are natural ways we can support
our children to recovery from illness quickly and efficiently: good
nutrition, hydration, probiotics,
rest and exercise. But the most important? Rather than focusing on how
often your child gets sick, celebrate how often she gets better.
8. Healing takes time.
The
most alternative medicine I practice these days is taking time. As a
society, we're addicted to quick fixes because we have no time to be
sick anymore. As a doctor, I was trained as a kind of glorified fireman,
looking to put out emergencies quickly and efficiently.
In
emergencies, strong medicine is often necessary to save lives but most
health problems in childhood are not emergencies. In those instances it
takes more than strong medicine to get better; it takes time. I realize
that taking another day off from work because a child has been sent home
from school with a runny nose can add real stress to our already
stressful lives. But children have taught me that healing is a kind of
developmental process that has its own stages too.
When
we don’t take time to recover, we rob our children of the necessary
stages they need to learn from if they are to develop long-lasting
health. When we take time to recover, illness becomes a journey of
discovery, not just a destination; we begin to see our health and
illness as two sides of the same coin.
9. The secret of life is letting go.
Life
is a process of constantly giving way. Things pushed past their prime
transform into something else. Just as spring gives way to summer, so is
each stage of development a process of letting go.
Crawling gives way to walking. Babbling gives way to speaking.
Childhood gives way to adolescence. By breathing in, you breathe out. By
eating, you poop.
Each season, each stage,
each little rhythm of our life is a matter of letting go. This allows us
to get rid of what we don't need to make room in our lives for new
information. Learning to let go is not always easy and each child has
his own adaptive style and timing. Nature favors diversity. Remember to
honor your child’s unique nature. This is what my book Fire Child Water Child is all about.
Perhaps
the most important way children teach me how to let go is in the way
they play. Playing means letting go of our inhibitions; it frees us up
and allows us not to take ourselves too seriously.
10. Trust yourself: You're the expert on your child.
One
of the most important things I teach new parents is how to trust
themselves. Nowhere is this more daunting than when a new baby comes
into our life. We’re expected to know everything and yet we feel like we
know nothing. But children have taught me that this knowing-nothing can
be a real opportunity to open our powers of intuition.
Mindful
parenting begins by listening with an open heart to your child’s life
without fear or panic. Studies have shown that a mother’s intuition is
more powerful than any lab test in picking up problems. Unfortunately
today we are flooded with so much scary information that it interferes
with our ability to listen to our own intuition. (Just think of the
arrogance of a doctor who acts like he knows your child better than you
do!)
Take a tip from your baby. Look into
your baby’s eyes. Imagine what it feels like to be conscious of the
world before you have language, before all those labels that scare us
and divide things into good and bad, right and wrong. Babies have no
enemies. This is seeing from the source. It is what Zen Buddhists call
“beginner’s mind.” Watch closely how your baby breathes with his belly.
This is Qigong breathing. Stop thinking for a moment and try breathing
this way. You may just find the answers you need waiting for you there.
11. Take the long view. (Because it’s easy to get caught in the immediacy of a problem, especially at 2am.)
Having
watched thousands of children grow into adulthood, what sometimes seems
like a big deal at four-months old or 14-years old may be no more than a
small bump in the road. Children have taught me how to take the long
view of life. When we step back and see the big picture of our lives, we
discover wisdom and compassion.
