The coolness of a toddler mom is a tad different from that of an older child. A prepubescent or even a teenager decides for themselves or their peers to be raised by a cool mum where for a toddler, the entire world and their grandmother aka onlookers decide whether she is cool or not.
As long as her child sleeps through the night the second they’re out of the womb, their house is spick and span, their children are achieving every milestone earlier than they should be, they hardly cry and are always pleasant with strangers, while she breezes through motherhood looking something like a model off the pages of vogue while she waves the “Fed Is best” flag signalling for world peace , yes she is the yummiest of all cool mums. That’s a pageant winner. Yet. Sadly far from reality.
I thank God every single day for being who I am. For having the ability to be unapologetically myself and assert my will to live my life by my own rules way before I even thought I’d ever have a child of my own. So this isn’t the ego boost one gets from growing a whole human inside them.
It does not mean I don’t listen to good advice. It’s just the ability to sift through all the well meaning (and some not) suggestions and see through them for value addition.
Logic is indeed our only friend.
How many of us get the nudge for sleep training? So many more for early schooling and sitter-friendliness.
Don’t hold your baby too much. You’ll spoil them. My child used to turn over in bed and go to sleep. XYZ carries her all the time and spoiled them for us. (The poor kid perhaps just went through sleep regression and some unsuspecting relative got blamed for their loving embrace and availability)
I was one that went against that grain of the hoity toities sporting the Ferber Method (Cry-it-Out) and the Old Wives Method of leaving the baby with a grandparent for the nights “so you can get better sleep” (God knows those are all just subtle ways of pushing you into baby making because the very next suggestion that comes is have another baby quickly, ikathay pal jaayein gai. Another post altogether.)
In the first year and a half of a baby’s life, night wakings come and go.
This is because of crucial brain development leaps. A child left to cry it out and sleep trained at the get go, learns to soothe themselves only until their next leap to face sleep regression and agony again. So the trauma of cry it out isn’t once, it is repeated over and over again the sense of abandonment embedding itself deeper every time.
Babies are MEANT to be clingy.
It is indeed against nature for babies to not be clingy. It is their innate survival instinct and plays a pivotal role in their development both physical and psychological.
I have a 2 years old and trust me my heart skipped a beat earlier this year when she willingly walked to another room and played there instead of looking for me or running back to me. Independence, when comes at its own pace is strong and confident. Forced and premature independence comes with its own issues that manifest themselves early and late in life in a myriad of ways. Just yesterday she also refused to go to Bazaar (shopping) with me and asked to stay with my dad instead. Asking em to get her a toy. I nearly fainted in disbelief and was wobbly the whole time I was away.
She was fine.
At 2 years and 5 months of age my toddler still needs me most of the time but she has come a long way since when she was 9 months old.
Her independence is gradual and led by her own self.
I have yet to see a teenager attached to their mother’s hip, gone rogue and high on attachment parenting through early childhood.