A Few Lessons on Parenting - Part 2

I have continued read through "The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read" (not an affiliate link) and gathered a few more lessons.

How you are thinking about your unborn baby will influence your future bond with them.
You can't bond too much with your newborn.
Put yourself in your newborn's shoes:
- Lie on the floor and imagine you feel lonely, hungry, thirsty, and uncomfortable, and you have no words to communicate this to anyone.
- Imagine what it is like to just be a body with feelings and no words.
- Imagine what it is like being unable to even sit up
- Imagine what it is like to just lie there and be your feelings
- Now imagine what it is like to be rescued from this state; to be picked up, comforted, and make to feel like you are a part of someone else.
Your job as a parent is to act as a more calm container for your child's feelings. However, it is difficult to do this in turn when you are not receiving this same benefit yourself.
Children need a stable primary bond to a caregiver. This should not be a paid caregiver since they come and go.
Children are people to be related to, not tasks to be dealt with.
For a child, the first impression of anything forms the deepest impression. Life will be easier for a baby if their first impression of the world is as a safe and loving place where they feel they belong.
- Misfortunes that happen to them in life are less likely to knock them off course, and they will recover more quickly if they have always felt that they count, they belong and they are lovable.
There are four attachment styles, but the one you want to build with your child is the 'secure' attachment style.
For an infant, wants and needs are the same thing.
When babies feel that their needs are unmet in their distress, it seems they dissociate from their distress. Although they will stop crying, research shows that their cortisol levels remain high. These feelings may surface again later in life, including into adulthood.
If you are having difficult feelings about being a parent, it may be because your child can trigger feelings you dissociated from as a child.

I'll continue posting these as I read through the book. Well worth the read.

-Kairos Anamnesis

Comments? Send me an email! kairosanamnesis@gmail.com