To Parents of Long Awaited Children

Everything I read and everything I was told when ZJ was a newborn baby was basically to give him attention.

A mother of six wonderful children told me that if I wanted to have calm children like hers to follow this advice; if your baby cries, meet his need as quickly as you can.

I thought I followed that advice well. Maybe I did a little too well. (I definitely followed the advice for too long - YIKES!)

Other books I read and magazine articles I saw were all geared toward bonding with baby. Playing with baby. Helping dad bond with baby. Baby, baby, baby. Etc. etc. etc. We were infatuated with our baby and we thought we were being the best parents ever!

Nothing I read talked about what we soon discovered to be a very big problem at our house. We were raising an attention-addicted child.

I just finished reading a book called "The Manipulative Child". I didn't get swallowed up in it or anything, but I think it had some very key points.

Our first baby was long-awaited. Along with that wait to become parents and the fact that we weren't sure if we'd ever be lucky enough to be parents to any other children (ha!) we overprotected him too. If he threw a fit about something we felt it was our job to fix his problem. Either that or distract him from it. This book pointed out something very freeing for us - We are NOT responsible for his emotions! It's not our JOB to make him feel happy all the time. Some reading this may be thinking; Well duh! But this is a common problem with parents of long-awaited children. It is completely natural to feel this way. It doesn't mean it's a good idea though! I surely do not want to raise a child who is dependent on ME to make him feel happy! I had never really thought about it this way before I read that book.

Now, instead of saying something to myself like, oh you're crying, what can I do to fix it (and make it stop for. the. love!)? Instead I say outloud, "I'm sorry you're sad" or "I'm sorry you're upset about that. What do you think you can do about it?"
It is freeing to give his emotions back to him. To not be manipulated by the crying, whining and temper tantrums anymore. Now we let him feel his own feelings and love and support him hopefully toward learning how to deal with life.

The other thing I liked about this book is the suggestion to stop asking my kids "why" they did something. Honestly they never have an answer for it and if they do the answer is not ever "good enough" anyway. It is really hard to not ask though! I can see how this pattern just teaches children to blame something or someone else for things that go wrong. We are hopefully on the path now to ownership of both emotions and actions.

One more really great quote from this book, "Bite your tongue. Be calm. It will get better."