Читать книгу The Fussy Baby Book: Parenting your high-need child from birth to five - Martha Sears - Страница 9

It wasn’t our fault. Hayden fussed because of her temperament, not because of our parenting abilities.

The challenge for us was to figure out how to mother and father this unique little person while also conserving enough energy for our other three children – and ourselves.

Our first obstacle to overcome was our professional past. We were educated in the fifties and sixties, so we were victims of the prevailing parenting mind-set of those times – fear of spoiling. We entered parenthood believing it was mandatory to control our children lest they control us. And there was that horrible fear of being manipulated. Were we losing control? Was Hayden manipulating us? We consulted books, a useless exercise. No baby book contained a chapter on Hayden. And the mostly male authors were either beyond child-rearing age or seemed far removed from the trenches of everyday baby tending. Yet here we were, two experienced adults, whose lives were being taken over by a ten-pound infant.

Hayden opened us up as people. The turning point came when we closed the baby books and opened our hearts to our child. Instead of defensively getting caught up in the fear of spoiling, we started listening to what Hayden had been trying to tell us from the moment she exited the womb. As soon as we discarded our preconceived ideas of how babies are supposed to be and accepted the reality of how Hayden was, we all got along much better.

If she fussed when we put her down but was content when we held her, we would hold her. If she needed to feed a lot, Martha would feed her. We believed Hayden knew what she needed, and fortunately she had the persistence to keep telling us until we understood.