My baby starts kindergarten in the morning. I am busily gathering together the last minute necessities - re-packaging her peaches so she can open them up, chilling her apple juice, making sure her jacket and backpack and lunch box are labeled, jotting down the things I need to remind her teacher of when I meet her tomorrow.
I can't believe she's this old. I can't believe five years has gone by so quickly. My beautiful baby has morphed into my beautiful little girl, and in the next blink of my eyes she will be my beautiful big girl and eventually my beautiful adult daughter.
I don't want the time to go. I want to hold her close to me while she's still small enough to fit on my lap, and whisper in her ear for ever how much I love her more than life. I want to always keep her safe in the same way I did when she was tucked away inside of me, nurtured by the very essence of my being.
I can't, though. I must put away my tears and nostalgia and my fear of change and instead dust off my confident smile. I must soothe her trepidations with assurances that I will be there the moment the bell rings to scoop her into my arms and tell her how proud I am of her for being herself.
I don't want her to go.
Showing posts with label Parenting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Parenting. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Friday, July 2, 2010
On learning styles and life lessons.
You know, there's a WHOLE lot of talk of "creating a critical thinker" when it comes to nurturing young children.
I'm of two minds on this. On one hand, I agree that yes, we should encourage our children to think critically, and nurture their analytical skills while they're so open to it and so naturally curious. On the other hand, though, I don't think that every moment of your child's life should be spent teaching some sort of lesson or thinking skill.
I take great issue with mothers who sneer at me when I respond "she wasn't" to questions like "how high was Kinder Major counting when she was two?"
Kinder Major showed a great right-brain preference from a very early age. She was drawn very strongly to music and color, and showed a vested interest in coloring and painting by 11 months. I nurtured that creativity. Instead of teaching her counting and numbers and her alphabet at such a young age, I taught her color names and allowed her to play in paint and with crayons. We colored on "her" wall next to my bed at night. We read books together that were filled with color and texture, we sang and listened to music of all kinds, we danced and played with blocks. As she continued to develop cognitively, she proved to have a knack for engineering based on aesthetics. Again, I nurtured that.
A big part of attachment parenting is *knowing* your child and nurturing their innate abilities. I don't feel that forcing "critical thinking" education on a child that doesn't learn that way is following that facet of APing. I believe that every child is different, and should be nurtured as such.
Now, please don't interpret that to mean "don't encourage curiosity and awareness" - that's not what I'm saying. What I AM saying, though, is don't bully your pediatrician into making a referral for speech and occupational therapy for your 18 month old because they haven't learned their entire alphabet yet. (True example.) Don't fill your child's day with structured learning, either. Allow your child to grow at their own pace, and to be a child, especially if they are still on the variable line between late infancy and early toddlerhood. Hell, even later toddlers. Allow them to be them, and allow them to grow as they will. Our children are not meant to be clones, nor are they meant to be programmed to fit our personal agendas on what we feel the perfect child should be. They are their own person, and should be allowed to grow as such.
That is a life lesson that we all need to learn as we grow with our children. Likewise, we should apply the same concepts to ourselves, since respectively, most of us are infants in our parenting lives. We need to remember that we are all different, and allow ourselves to grow as we will, instead of as someone else (or even our pre-child selves) think we should. We need to have confidence and faith in ourselves that we will thrive, and only with that confidence will our children form their own.
<3
I'm of two minds on this. On one hand, I agree that yes, we should encourage our children to think critically, and nurture their analytical skills while they're so open to it and so naturally curious. On the other hand, though, I don't think that every moment of your child's life should be spent teaching some sort of lesson or thinking skill.
I take great issue with mothers who sneer at me when I respond "she wasn't" to questions like "how high was Kinder Major counting when she was two?"
Kinder Major showed a great right-brain preference from a very early age. She was drawn very strongly to music and color, and showed a vested interest in coloring and painting by 11 months. I nurtured that creativity. Instead of teaching her counting and numbers and her alphabet at such a young age, I taught her color names and allowed her to play in paint and with crayons. We colored on "her" wall next to my bed at night. We read books together that were filled with color and texture, we sang and listened to music of all kinds, we danced and played with blocks. As she continued to develop cognitively, she proved to have a knack for engineering based on aesthetics. Again, I nurtured that.
A big part of attachment parenting is *knowing* your child and nurturing their innate abilities. I don't feel that forcing "critical thinking" education on a child that doesn't learn that way is following that facet of APing. I believe that every child is different, and should be nurtured as such.
Now, please don't interpret that to mean "don't encourage curiosity and awareness" - that's not what I'm saying. What I AM saying, though, is don't bully your pediatrician into making a referral for speech and occupational therapy for your 18 month old because they haven't learned their entire alphabet yet. (True example.) Don't fill your child's day with structured learning, either. Allow your child to grow at their own pace, and to be a child, especially if they are still on the variable line between late infancy and early toddlerhood. Hell, even later toddlers. Allow them to be them, and allow them to grow as they will. Our children are not meant to be clones, nor are they meant to be programmed to fit our personal agendas on what we feel the perfect child should be. They are their own person, and should be allowed to grow as such.
That is a life lesson that we all need to learn as we grow with our children. Likewise, we should apply the same concepts to ourselves, since respectively, most of us are infants in our parenting lives. We need to remember that we are all different, and allow ourselves to grow as we will, instead of as someone else (or even our pre-child selves) think we should. We need to have confidence and faith in ourselves that we will thrive, and only with that confidence will our children form their own.
<3
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Tackling Taboo: Bipolar Parents
With the decriminalization of Postpartum Depression through massive amounts of media coverage, I'd like to try and create a new initiative: decriminalizing and myth-busting Bipolar Disorder in parents.
You see, I'm a Bipolar Parent. It's something that I tend to keep to myself, so writing this post is monumental for me. With the pop-culture examples like the story of Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest and the fictional but true-to-life tale in Blue Sky, disclosing Bipolar Disorder to the general public is met with discrimination and even fear. Telling most people that you're a PARENT and Bipolar, though, is met with judgement and assumed abuse.
That is absolutely not the case in many (if not most,) families with a Bipolar parent.
See, we're no different from a mother with PPD or a father with PTSD. We go to counseling, we make decisions in conjunction with our physicians on which therapeutic pharmaceuticals to take, and we manage our lives so that outside stressors and triggers are avoided. If anything, parents with BPD are MORE careful in how well their disease is managed. We are, afterall, parents. It is not our disease that defines us in most cases; it's our children and our desire to be functional members of society just like everyone else. Our disease is simply a speed bump that must be navigated around.
Now, that's not to say it isn't difficult sometimes. As with any long-term disease, certain treatments may cease to work to their fullest. Physicians and therapists will occasionally move or close their practices. Outside stressors and triggers can't always be avoided. In those situations, it's crucial to have a support system in place such as an understanding partner, supportive family, and a friend or two that is close enough to be trusted with watching our children for an emergency doctor's appointment or a late-night phone call for a sanity check.
A common myth is that a woman who gets pregnant - either by choice or by mistake - is automatically putting her fetus at risk by taking dangerous drugs that will cause terrible deformities. This is exactly that: a MYTH. I will not discuss specific medications in this blog because I am not a licensed pharmacist or physician, but there are multiple psychotropic medications approved for the management of BPD that are also considered relatively safe for use during pregnancy.
Another myth: mothers with BPD cannot breastfeed due to the medication they're taking. Wrong again! See above for the debunking of this myth.
Myth 3: BPD is genetic and any person who reproduces is automatically sentencing their child to a life of misery and insanity. Incorrect! While yes, genetics do play a role in BPD, it is not a guarantee that the offspring of parents with BPD will end up with a positive diagnosis later in life.
Myth 4: Parents with BPD are incapable of being responsible enough to take care of children properly, or they are child abusers. This is probably the myth that bothers me the most. Being Bipolar does not automatically make one a bad parent! It is my experience that those of us with BPD are *MORE* attentive to our children, even OVER attentive, and due in part to that myth exactly! BPD is no more an indicator of how fit a person is to parent than Diabetes or Asthma or Allergies is. Joan Crawford is NOT the norm, here, people!
There is a wonderful web resource for friends, family, and those afflicted with BPD called Bipolar Lives if anyone has more questions or would like to research the condition more. Please - educate yourselves! Help debunk the popular and incorrect opinions that run rampant in our society today. Most importantly, remember that even those of us parents with BPD are people, too.
You see, I'm a Bipolar Parent. It's something that I tend to keep to myself, so writing this post is monumental for me. With the pop-culture examples like the story of Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest and the fictional but true-to-life tale in Blue Sky, disclosing Bipolar Disorder to the general public is met with discrimination and even fear. Telling most people that you're a PARENT and Bipolar, though, is met with judgement and assumed abuse.
That is absolutely not the case in many (if not most,) families with a Bipolar parent.
See, we're no different from a mother with PPD or a father with PTSD. We go to counseling, we make decisions in conjunction with our physicians on which therapeutic pharmaceuticals to take, and we manage our lives so that outside stressors and triggers are avoided. If anything, parents with BPD are MORE careful in how well their disease is managed. We are, afterall, parents. It is not our disease that defines us in most cases; it's our children and our desire to be functional members of society just like everyone else. Our disease is simply a speed bump that must be navigated around.
Now, that's not to say it isn't difficult sometimes. As with any long-term disease, certain treatments may cease to work to their fullest. Physicians and therapists will occasionally move or close their practices. Outside stressors and triggers can't always be avoided. In those situations, it's crucial to have a support system in place such as an understanding partner, supportive family, and a friend or two that is close enough to be trusted with watching our children for an emergency doctor's appointment or a late-night phone call for a sanity check.
A common myth is that a woman who gets pregnant - either by choice or by mistake - is automatically putting her fetus at risk by taking dangerous drugs that will cause terrible deformities. This is exactly that: a MYTH. I will not discuss specific medications in this blog because I am not a licensed pharmacist or physician, but there are multiple psychotropic medications approved for the management of BPD that are also considered relatively safe for use during pregnancy.
Another myth: mothers with BPD cannot breastfeed due to the medication they're taking. Wrong again! See above for the debunking of this myth.
Myth 3: BPD is genetic and any person who reproduces is automatically sentencing their child to a life of misery and insanity. Incorrect! While yes, genetics do play a role in BPD, it is not a guarantee that the offspring of parents with BPD will end up with a positive diagnosis later in life.
Myth 4: Parents with BPD are incapable of being responsible enough to take care of children properly, or they are child abusers. This is probably the myth that bothers me the most. Being Bipolar does not automatically make one a bad parent! It is my experience that those of us with BPD are *MORE* attentive to our children, even OVER attentive, and due in part to that myth exactly! BPD is no more an indicator of how fit a person is to parent than Diabetes or Asthma or Allergies is. Joan Crawford is NOT the norm, here, people!
There is a wonderful web resource for friends, family, and those afflicted with BPD called Bipolar Lives if anyone has more questions or would like to research the condition more. Please - educate yourselves! Help debunk the popular and incorrect opinions that run rampant in our society today. Most importantly, remember that even those of us parents with BPD are people, too.
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