Modern motherhood is overwhelming enough without all the expert advice.
Don’t tell your child they are beautiful.
Don’t say “be careful.”
Don’t say “good job.”
Don’t ask them questions during play.
Don’t feed to sleep and definitely don’t go to them when they cry.
Don’t say “don’t”… the irony.
Someone messaged me before and said she saw an article that actually said “don’t say ‘have fun’ when dropping your child at a friends, as it puts pressure on them to have fun.” Yikes.
I get the mentality behind SOME of these.
But I tell my kids they are beautiful, because they are, inside and out. They won’t aspire to looks because we openly recognise their strength and courage, their bravery - whether it be because they did want to do something, or chose not to, and so much more.
And we tell them they’re beautiful too.
I yell out “Be Careful”, not because I don’t want them to take risks and work things out on their own, but because I have exactly two seconds before one of them misplaces a foot while they’re jumping at the top of the slide. There are some risks I am just not willing to let them take, and this is where instinct should kick in rather than flashes of sentences from people who don’t know US or our kids.
I say ‘good job’, but I also tell them why they did a good job (when I remember) I get the mentality here… but I don’t think I’m scarring them, or ruining them, or setting them up for a life of not understanding how they got to the end result.
I know it might seem annoying to be constantly asking your toddler questions while they’re playing… OK, but the odd one? My kids LOVE that, they do. How do I know that? Because they are my kids.
And don’t feed to sleep… you all know how I feel about that one.
If you parent with kindness, lead with love and your heart is in the right place, then you’re doing more than OK.
Yes, when we know better we do better, but we’re a generation of parents filled with guilt thinking we’re saying and doing the wrong things from all these ‘shoulds’ and ‘shouldn’ts’.
And then they publish the clickbait article later that says ‘trust your instincts’.
We are trying, believe me.
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