Recently I’ve been helping a new mom through sleep training - I instantly loved this woman when she called me a guru (when my kids were little and I was so rigid about their sleeping because I couldn’t function without my sleep, guru was not the first word that came to mind when people talked about my approach 😂). We’ve been going through the ups and downs of how to get a baby into a new habit. It’s fun and refreshing and brings back so many memories. I completely remember that feeling of sleepless nights and wondering if it would ever end. And somehow, it did. And I survived. And I did it again (and again and again). I gained confidence with each one. By the last two kids I enjoyed that time - the quiet of night when it was just me and the baby and no one else to pay attention to. But without the experience of the last few to remind me that tunnel had a shining light at the end I wouldn’t have been able to enjoy it.
You’re probably wondering if my walk down memory lane has a point - and it does. So much of our learned and shared human experience is based on living through things. We gain confidence each time we successfully navigate a situation. What struck me when thinking about this was that if we’d somehow just believe in ourselves and our abilities to begin with - how incredible that would be for how we approach situations.
As a parent you are dealing with new things on a daily basis. Some are small and seem inconsequential, some are huge mountains to climb. No one knows the magic formula to succeed. None of us know if our approach to any particular thing will work. We’re all new to so much on a regular basis. Just when you think you’ve got it, life throws you another curveball and you have to react. Just as you’ve mastered diapers and toddlers, you’re toilet training. You think you’ve scored a home run as your child walks down the aisle at their graduation and then you’re figuring out the next stage. You’re an ever evolving parent - bending and relearning.
Beneath it all - if you can believe in yourself, trust yourself - then you can navigate all the new situations as they arise. You don’t have to have all the answers, it’s ok to self doubt, to stop and rethink and reroute. But if you can believe you have got this then I believe your children will believe it too. Even without the answers, the approach, the details - you do have this. They feel that confidence and they breed off it. When they feel you self-doubting then they doubt you as well. Sometimes, we put it on as a show until the real plan and confidence formulates. But it all starts with believing in yourself. Babies feel it, they inherently know when you trust yourself and then they react to that confidence. Teenagers, ever ready to pounce on weakness, sense it. It’s amazing what this small but crucial feeling will do to you as a person and as a parent.
Just believe!
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