Parenting is a science that needs to be learned, and given the availability of information nowadays; it is only foolish not to take advantage of previous experiences and proven researches to ease the frustration of this heavy responsibility, and guarantee a healthy and fruitful growth to your child.
An important note to parents!
Before going any further, I want to make sure that you
start on good terms with yourself as a human being before becoming a parent;
I’m taking about the mixture of bad feelings every new mother and father feel
once they welcome their first baby.
It's completely natural to feel frustrated and inadequate
with your first newborn. No one warned you or prepared you for this huge
psychological responsibility, and it won’t be innate to assume it and excel in
it right away. As for mothers, you are not inherently equipped with a certain “Mother love”
or “Mother instinct”; this comes smoothly and gradually with experience. A
considerable amount of time is needed to adjust your life to the sudden change,
and strengthen the bounds with the new stranger.
Another feeling that shall not be ignored but rather openly expressed is resentment and hatred towards your baby. Lot of moms can feel anger, even bitterness, because of the fact that their lives became annoyingly revolving around a baby in a crib, or because that demanding baby is leading the couple life straight to its ruin, or maybe because they feel like the responsibility is entirely thrown on their shoulders. It’s essential to communicate these natural feelings with your partner, there is no shame in it; it will allow you to ease the burden and psychologically relieve you by knowing that you are not alone in this, your partner is certainly feeling just the same.
What’s at stake?
Being a parent means being a 24 7/7 psychologist and
teacher. You’ll be the first human connection your baby will establish, and,
without exaggerating, the most important teacher he’ll ever have. In fact, the
child’s basic personality structure along with 50% of his intelligence is developed
during the first five years of his life. Therefore, all the lessons he will
learn from you and the way you’ll interact with him, especially during this
crucial period, will play a major role in his later life. It will determine, to
a large extent, whether or not he’ll be happy and successful.
Which bring us
to the one million question: What to do to help your child attain the maximum
development of his potentialities?
With each of the four stages of development to age
six, your child will be adding a particular new lens to how he sees himself and
the world around him. The way you handle each phase will reveal a trait of your
child’s personality that he will carry for the rest of his life.
Let’s start with the first stage: the first year of life.
Infancy: Either an optimistic or a pessimistic adult!
It covers from birth to the time he starts to walk.
Your baby begins to learn from the moment he is born. During this phase, he’ll
be developing the basic feeling about what it means to be alive; he’ll either
develop a basic sense of trust and happiness or one of distrust and
unhappiness.
What you need to do is simply fulfill all the baby’s needs, and they are grouped under two categories:
1. The basic needs:
ü Hunger: Feed him without delay, no schedule is needed, your baby knows best when he is hungry, and he doesn’t lie or look to be spoiled, THERE IS NO SPOILING IN RESPONDING IMMEDIATELY TO YOUR LESS THAN TWO YEARS OLD BABY. If you stall and leave him crying, he’ll just learn that he can’t trust a world where his honest demands are cruelly ignored. He’ll either react to this with more outrage or apathetic resignation, the result will be the same; a despising and pessimistic person.
ü Warmth: We usually tend to overdress a baby so no worries on this one.
ü Sleep: This will surely cause some troubles due to the difference between the baby’s sleep patterns and adult’s. Hang on in there, this inconvenient will end sooner than you think, just be patient.
ü Diapers: Don’t communicate your disgust at soiled diapers to your baby; words like ‘Iww’ or ‘Akh’ are perfectly understandable to your child and it will only make the toilet training harder later.
ü Contact comfort: Hold, kiss, and show your baby that you love him.
2. The intellectual needs:
It consists chiefly on stimulating his sensors by
talking, singing, and playing with him. You’ll also need to provide for him
objects of different colors, forms, and textures to manipulate; common
household objects will amply do the trick. Just give him access to a wide
variety of safe materials to explore without restriction; it will enable him to
develop to the maximum the potential of his intelligence.
· Interact with
your baby; respond to the random sounds he utters.
· Label his world:
Point out to an object and name it, you can also use appropriate books for
babies. This will stimulate his language development.
· Childproof your baby’s environment so you don’t have to express too much restriction once he’ll start crawling. (Sharp or swallowable objects)
The “should not do” list:
1. Do not
ignore a crying baby: When all the
basic needs are met and the baby is still crying, it’s usually due to stomach
distress or colic. Massaging his stomach or simply holding him close can
enormously help. The point is that there
is always an earnest reason for a baby’s cry, and for the psychological well-being of your baby, respond to it urgently.
2. Don’t
worry about spoiling your baby because you won't! It’s absurd to ask a baby to give up babyish
behaviors; he is unable to act differently because he IS a baby. A less than
one year old baby is certainly too young to teach him that ‘he can’t always have his way’. He is too
tender and immature to cope with much frustration at this age.
3. Don’t
compare: Your child is a
unique individual, he’ll go through different stages of development at his own
pace no matter what you do, so just relax and let him be, it will be easier and
best for both of you.
4. Father should not ignore his baby: The relationship with his father is the second most important relationship in a child’s life, and the foundation of it lies in infancy. If the father is too busy to take interest in his baby, the child, when older, won’t have interest in what the father has to say to him either.
The good outcome!
If your baby has had a loving and caring relationship with you, which is guaranteed by providing for all his basic needs, and has been exposed to enough sensory and intellectual stimulation through objects, activities…, by the end of his first year, he’ll develop a good sense of basic trust and optimism about life.
PS:
The first year can be particularly very hard because
it’s the phase of disequilibrium. In fact, your child will be
alternating continuously between equilibrium and disequilibrium during his
first five years. Disequilibrium phases are noticeably full of emotional and
physical growth spurts. Going through constant changes and developments, your
child might be difficult to handle and you might experience some of the most
desperate and challenging times as a parent. The key to survive these tough periods
is essentially to know that they are
transitory to a much calmer period, and that you can’t do much about it but
to help your baby go smoothly through them.
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