I've had some things bugging me a lot lately and one of them has been parenting articles. Honestly we as parents get bombarded with them involuntarily on social media or voluntarily by signing up for the e-mails and they always contain the same general view, "well if you're doing this then your child will end up like this...instead raise your child in this cookie cutter way and if you feel differently then you're completely wrong and shouldn't parent". Maybe I'm wrong but that's what I get from these so called "parenting help" articles, especially from the involuntary ones posted on social media.
You may be asking the question "well Carrie if you don't like parenting articles then why do you read them?"
Here is your answer, I don't but it's very difficult while I'm scrolling down and skimming my newsfeed on Facebook to not read the title and the title very much sums up what the article is about, hence why it is called a title.
Now don't get me wrong, I've looked up specific things to help me out when I'm at an extreme loss of what to do for my children to get an IDEA of how I should handle something that comes up and I usually go to my trusty parenting.com website for what I need because that website is the least condemning to me in my opinion. Even that website though can make me feel like I'm not doing a good job as a parent though so even though I call it my trusty website I very rarely use it.
I remember after McKaty was born I read every article I could because I was a brand new mom and she is my first child and I felt like that if I followed everything these articles told me she would turn out perfectly, boy was I wrong! First off I breastfed McKaty for only about 6 weeks then I got Mastitis and just couldn't do it anymore. Do you know how stressed and disheartened I felt when I had to go to straight formula with her? Those articles has me thinking she was going to be overweight and have developmental problems because I stopped breastfeeding. Well 4 years later she is a very healthy weight and very smart! The parenting article didn't tell me that would happen!
Another example of how badly parenting articles affected me when McKaty was born was they said that if you want your child to fall asleep on their own and sleep through the night then don't hold them and rock them to sleep. Four years later I wish I had taken every single chance to hold McKaty because never again will she be itty bitty like she was and I'll never be able to hold her like that again. I'm glad I gave that one up when Kenna was born because I loved rocking Kenna to sleep and guess what....she sleeps through the night just fine and falls asleep by herself too.
Lesson learned from both McKaty and Kenna is to just ignore parenting articles! You raise your children how you think and feel best! If you let your child play with a phone or tablet (in moderation of course) I promise they will turn out fine. If you want to hold and rock your baby to sleep then you go for it. If your child doesn't potty train until 3 1/2 then don't stress about it! (McKaty was that old when she finally did). I would go read parent blogs to let you know that your not the only one out there whose children drive you crazy or that you feel like the worst parent in the world, (find the real parent ones not the ones who claim they have a perfect life!). You parent how you know best, fix your mistakes and just remember....you turned out just fine too and if your child feels loved then you are doing a great job!
