Emilie Silverwood-Cope: ‘Is there any point in parenting advice?’
Our parenting columnist, Emilie Silverwood-Cope, discusses what parents learn the hard way.
Is there any point in giving parenting advice? I only ask because I saw someone post on Instagram that she wished she’d been told how difficult giving birth could be. How did she not know, I thought to myself.
Then I thought back to my first delivery and how naive I had been. I remembered my carefully written birth plan and the blind faith I had in the breathing exercises I’d learnt in my NCT class.
What happened next is what happens to lots of us. I learnt the hard way. Labour was almost unbearable and my birth plan was no better than a short story about best case scenarios.
What a metaphor for parenting giving birth is. You can plan all you like but things will go wrong and lots of it is out of your control. By baby number three I didn’t even write a birth plan.
So what else have I learnt the hard way?
Guilt and anxiety
These two tricky bedfellows moved in shortly after I had baby number one.
I was blissed out on oxytocin, dreamily staring at my precious first born and boom, I noticed the window was slightly open. Could my baby wriggle out of my arms and fall out of the window? Have I toxified the house by putting too much bleach down the loo? I couldn’t look at a flight of stairs without imagining us both tumbling down them.
Irrational thoughts and obsessive worries took over when my babies were small. What I wish I’d known back then was how normal that was.
Evolution has primed us to see danger everywhere and keep these babies safe. Gosh, it’s hard work though and is why us mums age in dog years.
The “I will never do that when I’m parent” things you will, in fact, do
When I’m a parent I will never let my children misbehave in cafes, have tantrums, be fussy eaters, cry on airplanes, be rude to me, not sleep, sleep in my bed, spend hours on screens, wear those clothes, eat that food…. or whatever that thing is that parents are getting so wrong.
We all knew, pre-children, how best to parent. We looked on bemused at these bedraggled mums. Why are they so rubbish at this! Who knew doing the parenting thing was totally different to thinking about doing the parenting thing.
Laugh at yourself, forgive the compromises, the failings, the dropped balls and the dropped standards. If you hear someone say “when I am parent…” , smile, get out your proverbial knitting and sit on your rocking chair: “Oh, that’s we all said.”
Work will change
What did I think back then, in those pregnant but pre-baby months as I planned my return to work. That being in two places was possible? That we’d never be ill, late, tired, sleep deprived? Maybe I thought I was getting a really tiny, amenable, house mate who would understand I had a demanding boss and needed to make money.
I remember later warning a pregnant friend that her plan to travel on the Tube during rush hour with her tiny baby (so she could use a nursery near her work) might not be a long-term solution. I was told the baby would just have to get used to crowds. I said nothing when they moved out of London.
Boredom
I had heard of this maternal love and was excited to experience it. I was less prepared for all the boring bits. Parenting involves so much micro-waiting. Getting in and out of cars. Putting on shoes. Brushing teeth. Waiting for a tiny creature to fall asleep. Drop-offs. Pick-ups. Getting tights on after swimming. Being told a story about Minecraft. So many boring moments of micro-waiting. Moments that aren’t long enough to do anything else but require your presence and your patience.
Buddhist monks searching for zen enlightenment while sitting in silent temples have nothing on the patience we’ve had to tap into.
Your children are not the same as you, or as each other
It’s hardly brand new information. What I mean is your children are different in ways that will make you feel you’re learning how to parent all over again.
Everything can be different from how well they sleep, whether they like their buggy, settle into nursery school or will try new foods.
A lot of parents will look at what their children can do and assume it’s all down to their parenting. They think their great eater is because of them.
What you learn by having more than two children is how little you actually know. Maybe your great sleeper was just dumb luck. The more children you have the more control you relinquish. It’s so often ‘fingers-crossed’ parenting.
The days are long and the years are short
How I hated it when people said this to me. It felt like such sentimental drivel because the days were so long and hard I’d feel jealous of Sisyphus and his rock. At least no one asked him repeatedly for a snack. And yet, I look back and think “where did all that time go”. How have my children got this big? Did I make the most of those long days? Why did no one tell me?
