Читать книгу Raising Girls: Why girls are different – and how to help them grow up happy and confident - Gisela Preuschoff - Страница 18

Step one is to forget your pre-birth expectations. This is particularly hard if the child you are holding in your arms is quite different from the one you expected. Charming babies who seem calm and satisfied from the beginning and look lovable have an easy time of it, even if they don’t match their parents’ dream.

A screamer, however, who comes into the world bald and bright red, and who gives the impression of not wanting to become friends with this world at all, presents all kinds of problems. All the fantasies and illusions you created after seeing wonderful baby photos in magazines come crashing down. Perhaps your child became a girl when she ‘should’ have been a boy, and perhaps she was born too early and is still in danger of being disabled – or is already. People can achieve and change a lot, but we certainly don’t control everything.

Having said all that, it is also the case that many parents experience the opposite: they are overwhelmed by their own capacity to love. They had never expected that a little creature, their daughter, could inspire so much love. They are surprised by the primal, deep force that rolls over them like a huge wave whenever they look at their baby.