The Most Common Parenting Mistake Of All
by: Andrea Flint
Becoming a parent, especially for the first time, is an exciting but scary
experience. You'll be entering a whole new world where different rules apply,
and no matter how prepared you think you are, there's usually little you've
experienced before which you can draw on when making the choices and snap
decisions that will become a major part of your life once the little one
arrives.
It's for this reason that there's an abundance of parenting
advice available which you can use to inform your decisions. There are print
magazines packed with useful advice, web sites with tons of articles to peruse,
not to mention the well meaning but sometimes irritating advice and opinions of
family and friends. Despite all this information being available, most parents
are terrified that they're somehow not up to the job and will do it wrong, and
herein lies the most common parenting mistake of all: not trusting in your own
judgment and instincts.
However intimidating the prospect is of having
ultimate responsibility for the nurture of a new and precious life, you should
be in no doubt that you have exactly the skills and capabilities you'll need
over the coming years.
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Think about it. As human beings, we're all
parenting specialists. In evolutionary and genetic terms, our whole existence is
geared towards producing and nurturing offspring, and over the millions of years
that the human species has been developing we've become generally incredibly
good at it. You only need to watch a mother and child together to know that
however difficult the process may seem, bringing up a child is the most natural
thing in the world, and something for which each and every parent to be has the
necessary skills to make a success of it if they make it their number one focus.
Of course, this doesn't mean that you should ignore all advice. After
all, the experience handed down from generation to generation is absolutely
vital and is how civilization developed in the first place. Not one of us has
all the answers, we all need input from others in all kinds of situations.
But trust in your own capabilities as a parent above all else, and trust
in your own ability to make the best of all the advice and support that's out
there. That way you'll definitely be the best parent your child could ever have.
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