Breaking the Parenting Rules
I’ve already broken all kinds of rules that parents follow, such as not taking him out of the house by a certain time. The kid and I went for a walk on day two in the home. Keep the baby out of the sun… well in my mind some sun can’t hurt (plus have you seen how white this kid is)… Keep the house calm and quiet in order to not stress the baby out… We keep the house active and at normal volumes so he can get use to sleeping that way. I’m sure there are many other things that seasoned parents would shun me out of their parent play groups for saying, such as he’s only 5 weeks, and I had him sit in a Bumbo today, or We took him to the zoo when he was shy of 4 weeks old.
But the thing is… it’s my turn to learn from my mistakes as every other parent has. So far, I haven’t injured him, and I don’t think I’ve put him in harm (except just being around people in general), but my thoughts are this… if I expose him to as much as possible up front (sounds, colors, smells) then he may develop faster from the different stimuli he’s experiencing…
Who knows?
Definitely not me…. but it sounds good right?
Here’s my main thing… I refuse to be the dad who’s scared to put his son out there. Not in harms way, but just out there for experience. And I know I’ll make a mistake once or twice, but I’m pretty good at learning from my mistakes. If I am to be his role model, then that is something that he’ll have to see from me. Daddy will do things against the norm, sometimes they’ll work, sometimes they won’t. Sometimes they’re right, and sometimes they’re very wrong. But whatever it is… Daddy usually learns from his mistakes the first time.
Usually.
People will judge. Hell. I’ll judge other people. But here’s the thing, if there was only one right way to do it, there would be a book given at birth that would be law to follow. So unless we actually got ours, and I over looked it while worrying about paying our way out of the hospital… my decisions may lead into mistakes, but I’ll be damned if this kid lives in a bubble because of social norms and status quo.
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Posted in Uncategorizedwith 3 comments.
I don’t know you but looking through this blog it’s very apparent that you care about him a great deal, that’s literally half the battle. It’s hard to go wrong when you’re a loving and caring parent. I always say different strokes for different folks, do what works for you and your family.
Marvin,
I sincerely appreciate the kind words. Thank you.
Interesting post! I can’t remember who said it, but there’s the saying “if you don’t make mistakes, you don’t make anything” – and I think that refers to the point you make about learning from mistakes.
I’m sure there are lots of us parents who have made parenting mistakes (and hopefully learnt from them!) as there are children who have made mistakes too.
The trick as a parent, I guess, is to help our children know which mistakes have lessons, and which mistakes should be avoided – those are the ones to be scared of! Fell off the swing? OK, don’t swing so high, or hold on tighter. Got run over and killed by a chav speeding on the road when picking up a stick on the road? Too late to learn from that mistake