Parenting Outside the Lines: Forget the Rules, Tap into Your Wisdom, and Connect with Your Child - Softcover

Leahy, Meghan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0593421426 ISBN 13: 9780593421420

Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2022

Inhaltsangabe

No-nonsense, sanity-saving insights from the Washington Post on Parenting columnist--for anyone who's drowning in parental pressure and advice that doesn't work.

Ever feel overwhelmed by the stress and perfectionism of our overparenting culture--and at the same time, still look for solutions to ease the struggles of everyday family life? Parenting coach and Washington Post columnist Meghan Leahy feels your pain. Like her clients and readers, she grew weary of the endless "shoulds" of modern parenting--along with the simplistic rules and advice that often hurt more than help.

Filled with insights based on child development and hard-won lessons in the trenches, this honest guide presents a new approach, offering permission to practice imperfect parenting with a strong dose of common sense, empathy, and laughter. You'll gain perspective on trusting your gut, picking your battles, and when to question what's "normal" (as opposed to what works best for your child).

Forget impossible standards and dogma, and serving organic salmon to four-year-olds. Forget helicopters, tiger moms, and being "mindful" in the middle of a meltdown (your child's or your own). Instead, discover relatable insights for staying connected to your child and true to the parent you want to be (and already are).

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Meghan Leahy is the On Parenting columnist for The Washington Post, and a certified parenting coach. She lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband, three school-age daughters, and her dog. Leahy has appeared on NPR and ABC, as well as in numerous other publications.

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Chapter 1

 

You Are Not Up to the Parenting Task, and You Never Were (and Other Lies Our Parenting Culture Will Tell You)

 

In much of America today, the parenting culture picks up speed early and never seems to slow down. As soon as you become pregnant . . . no, as soon as you couple up, it seems that the entire world rises up and sends you website after website of activities you and your child will need to do, ASAP. Oh, it begins innocuously enough when you are pregnant: You take one birthing class, but then comes Home Birth and Water Birth classes, then Breastfeeding, Baby Wearing, and Going Back to Work After Childbirth classes, and the next thing you know you're signed up for Knitting with Baby, Goat Yoga and Baby, Breastfeeding and Tequila Tasting, and Sleep Training Your Puppy and Baby classes. Taken alone, there is nothing wrong with any of these classes; it's just that all of these options begin to set the tone for what a "good" parent looks like in our modern culture, and that look is super jacked up.

For a long time (when I was blissfully childless), I really judged these activity-crazed parents. You know, the parents who relentlessly pursued every class and course; for whom self-improvement was a way of life. "What happened to you to make you this insecure?" I would muse as I watched these parents rush around the city. "These poor, poor parents . . ." My pity was more obnoxious than their insecurity, really, but I couldn't see it. (That's how obnoxious people are, right?) I simply could not understand why parents needed to spend their money and time on Mommy and Me Exercise and Baby and Bach and Swimming with Your Six-Month-Old and Baby Massage 101. Like, you don't know how to touch your baby? My snark was backed up by my childless friends and, like every non-parent who came before us, we would nod and smile to ourselves over our wine and cruditŽs, accumulating our bad parenting karma. "We won't be like that as parents. Ever."

Ah, well.

Despite my laissez-faire attitude toward all things parenting when I wasn't actually a parent, as soon as my spouse and I decided to become pregnant, I found myself spiraling down dozens of "How to Conceive" websites. There were Chinese gender calendars, sex positions to guarantee a boy, analysis of monthly mucus (insert gross face here), and charts to track your temperature. My breezy "just have sex and see what happens" attitude was hijacked, and suddenly, I was part of the crowd. What crowd, you ask? The very crowd that I had made fun of, that's who. The crowd of people who tell you that you need tools and tricks and worksheets to get pregnant. I ate it up, and because every snarky person is actually a fearful person, my deep fear was that I could not get pregnant. There was zero evidence to support my thinking, mind you. By all accounts, I had a normal period and a normal ovulation and I had somehow escaped all versions of STIs and STDs in my teens and early twenties. I didn't have cysts or PCOS or endometriosis. My mother had easily conceived, as had her mother. I was in my mid-twenties and, true, I smoked cigarettes like it was my job and, yes, I drank enough alcohol to kill a horse . . . but otherwise, I was in good shape . . . right? None of those facts mattered. I was afraid I couldn't get pregnant because our culture told me I needed to make it a project, so into the interwebs I dove.

I love a project, so I began fastidiously tracking my temperature. Every morning, before my feet hit the floor, I would take my temperature and write it down on the sheet I had printed out. I was meticulous on the time and, as I went along, I noticed my temperature had begun to rise, if only slightly. Ah, good! I was ovulating! And as I went along, my temperature stayed slightly elevated. Hmmm, I thought, I got this wrong. Something is wrong with this thermometer; my temp is supposed to drop again . . . I was just trying to get a baseline going, and I had screwed that up. I showed my husband the chart, and he shrugged and suggested starting again after my period. I was discouraged. I had been off my pill for a month or two, and I guessed that the hormones were still messing with my system. I felt like I was already failing pregnancy school; it was just one simple and lousy worksheet with temperatures and dots on it, and I had already gotten it all wrong.

So, I went back to life as normal: smoking and drinking and waiting for my period. Despite my screwup, I was determined to get this temp thing right, but in the meantime, I felt like crap. My breasts hurt. I felt crampy and tired, and not just hangover tired. Like, dead-on-my-feet tired. Every opportunity I had, I was in the supine position. And when I could not lie down, I would put my head in my hands and just shut my eyes. I was teaching English literature in an all-boys school at the time, and I can remember the feeling of resting my head on the cool wooden desk as I waited for the boys to filter in. I remember wondering, How many movies can I show them before the school fires me? And food began to taste, well, odd. It was either like heaven on earth, or total dirt. I couldn't even swallow some of my favorite foods. Must be getting the flu, I thought.

Driving home on a Friday, I complained to my friend Caitie (a new mother herself) and in her typical and direct fashion, Caitie suggested the obvious: "It sounds like you're pregnant, Meg." No, I assured her, that couldn't be. I had screwed up the temperature thing, and I was just waiting for my period. Wait, where was my period? I silently wondered. Caitie sounded confident, so I stopped at CVS and bought the cheapest pregnancy test I could find. There, I thought. I will take the damn thing, prove her wrong, and that will be that.

The next morning, I peed on the stick, lit a cigarette, and proceeded to watch a Real World: Paris marathon on MTV. For hours, I laid on a futon (oh, the humanity), smoked cigarettes, drank peach-flavored Snapple iced tea, and watched a TV show that I had already watched that year. When the four iced teas finally caught up to me, I returned to the bathroom and saw the pregnancy test perched innocently on the edge of the tub. It was now late into the afternoon; how had I forgotten that I had taken a pregnancy test? Two lines. Wait, what did that mean? I began to feel the bottom dropping out of my stomach and rummaged through the trash for the pregnancy test box and instructions.

"Two lines equals pregnant," said the box. Well, the second line was kind of faint. "A faint line indicates pregnancy. See your doctor."

I dropped the test on the floor and turned to leave the bathroom, promptly tripping over my jeans. As I hit the floor, my breasts aching and my stomach churning, I remember thinking, But I didn't do the temperature thing right . . . Yes, of course I was pregnant. And looking back, this was just the first in a long line of incidents where I would not listen to my body or my instincts when it came to parenthood.

What does my pregnancy story have to do with your children and your activities? My point is that when it comes to trusting our intuition and what we know about our own children, our culture keeps us, the parents, in a whipped frenzy of doubt. We feel like we have to follow a certain path, instructions, and add more to our lives to live up to societyÕs expectations. The message is clear: You are not good enough to conceive, birth, and raise your own child. Our logical brain knows this isnÕt true, but our emotional brain (our limbic system) whispers, ÒBut what if you are wrong . . . ? The stakes are too high . . . This is my kid we are talking about! I have one shot to get this right . . . I donÕt wanna mess it up.Ó Parents of all stripes and types are funneled into a tight cattle chute of choices and activities until our...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2022
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593421426
• ISBN 13: 9780593421420
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 257
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Friedensallee 273; Hamburg; 22763; Deutschland