I wish I had known just how amazing the childcare industry was before my daughter was born.
Like most families we spoke with, my wife and I agonised a lot over decisions around childcare. While I don’t think we were particularly over-protective, the idea of leaving our little girl with strangers (or anyone) other than us before she was six months old was pretty frightening. Even knowing that my wife had to return to work, there was still much handwringing wondering about how our daughter would cope. But it had to happen, so the best we could do was try to put those fears aside for the moment- as there was plenty more to stress about and other questions to answer first. How many days of childcare would we start with? Which centre did we like the best and would anywhere even have room?
0 Comments
I rarely object when others tell my daughter how cute or pretty or beautiful she is; but I try to resist the urge to do the same. Don’t get me wrong. I suspect she will always be perfect to me and just looking at her makes me happy, but I have learnt to control my instinctive reaction to speak fondly about her appearance.
I've written earlier that one of the things that makes parenting so hard is the myriad of seemingly little decisions that feel like they can have big consequences. With this in mind, its important to emphasise the need to respect individual parents' decisions about what is best for their children- unless it is blatantly harmful (hello anti-vaccers and Pete Evans). This post is in no way a criticism of those who don't share my view and continue this very common practice. Maybe no one has raised the possible consequences with them or maybe you have considered possible implications and didn't find them compelling. But they seemed compelling to me. I’m not the first to make this observation, but I think it is important so I’ll repeat it. Telling young kids they are pretty or handsome has implications we don’t think of. Because soon, when they are only a little older, people naturally start to tell them they are pretty less often, until it almost stops altogether. Adults just don’t react the same way to older children. We know there are a range of reasons for this, but do the children at the time? “Why don’t people think I’m pretty anymore?” they could be excused for thinking. It may only be a small voice in their head saying this, but in an era where childhood eating disorders are a real risk, do we want to give it any voice at all? |
Dad thoughtsI haven’t had much chance to write much over the last couple of weeks. This has largely been to do with the birth of my daughter, which has had a profound impact on my life. As a corollary of this, a fair amount of my thoughts and observations may shift to the new topic of parenthood. I’m not planning on stealing from Sonia Kruger’s playbook and use the phrase, “as a parent,’ to make claims with no factual basis, but parenthood is a complex and fascinating area so I will be making a few comments about my experience of it. Archives
October 2020
Categories |