This article is for all the first time mom’s out there experiencing fears, concerns, pressures and anxiety with regard to every move you make and how it impacts your young child.
Is there anyone out there worried about the imprint your every action will leave in your young child’s brain? It frightens me on a daily basis and I often wonder: am I the only one?
During my pregnancy, I felt very out of control and so to combat that, I, like many other moms read every article, story, pamphlet regarding pregnancy and child rearing. During my research I came across an overall theme that who your child will become is determined in the first 2-6 years of life.
WOW!
That hit me square in the face! That’s it?
I thought to myself, oh gosh, I better be on my best behavior. (I totally get that there is a nature versus nurture aspect to it, but for this article’s sake I am just talking about nurture.) Now, maybe this sounds easy to some, but to me it’s like diving into a pile of laundry headfirst so deep you don’t know where to begin. I’ve been worrying about everything from all my bad habits to vices. I starting thinking about how I bite my nails when I am bored or how I drink two (….ok that’s conservative) glasses of wine while spouting curse words at Grey’s Anatomy…. ok so those are more on the silly side, but there are times when I am not as together as I should be over one situation or another and I started to freak out.
Now I wondered how could I do that while navigating the challenges of being a newlywed? My husband and I went the route of baby first, then marriage, and since we never fought much during our dating years, we had to tackle the very sketchy field of ‘learning how to fight fair.’ In doing so though, we have had many disagreements or as my more functional friends call it, ‘discussions’ that weren’t so fair. There has been yelling, cursing and overall, acting like idiots/animals in trying to get out points across. (Now, I get what some of the critics are going to think or say, ‘you shouldn’t be arguing in front of you child,’ and to that I say I agree to some extent. I don’t believe in the thought process of disagreeing solely behind closed doors. I think that teaches something different entirely. I do agree that very serious issues should be behind closed doors, but here I am talking about the PG type of arguments such as you ‘you don’t pick up after yourself,’ ‘I feel like our responsibilities are not 50/50′).
We finally realized that we better get our fighting game in check since we are trying our best to be role models and our disagreements are supposed to teach our little one how to fight, argue, disagree, whatever you would like to call it.
That’s the other thing I didn’t realize in being a first time mom. They really are sponges, even at the youngest of ages. It’s like having a little shadow following me everywhere, and imitating everything I do. Even the really silly things I do. I never realized how funny I really look like while walking around mumbling under my breath until I saw my son doing it (though he looked pretty cute, I look like kind of crazy).
I really find this challenging and pressuring. Everything I say, do, eat is being watched and everything I say, do, eat is leaving an imprint. It’s overwhelming. I want my child to be well rounded, sweet, and happy and an overall good person, but how can I bank on that if I don’t get myself on that path?
While I find that pressure to be heavy, it also has been eye opening and has forced me to be introspective and to want to be a better mother and wife. It’s also forced me and the hub to approach our disagreements with sensitivity (and sans cursing, obviously!) We know someone is watching so we are kinder to one another and more willing to apologize…..and the great thing is we mean it now. It’s more genuine and more sincere….who woulda thought?!
So I guess the moral of my story is we are imprinting his mind…and he is reformatting ours.