Parenting without guilt - Why trying your best is the best

If you're thinking of buying the books: don't.  If you have: throw them away.  Any expecting or new parent knows exactly to which books I refer.  Your baby is not a weekend away in Paris requiring a guidebook or a new Golf complete with user manual.  Your baby is your child and the best way to learn parenting is by being a parent, not slavishly following rules set down by someone who has never met you or your baby or even, in some cases, had a baby of their own.

Of course you will want advice, guidance and reassurance but that is what your parents, friends and relations are for.  They do know you and they know, or will be getting to know, your baby.  They are there for imparting wisdom, sharing experience and pooling information not for the imposition of a one size fits all regime.

This is no Brexitish denunciation of experts but an assurance that there is not and never will be any greater expert on your child than you its parent.  My particular bugbear with these books is that their ostensible purpose is improving the lot of new parents when in reality they do nothing but engender absolutely toxic feelings of guilt when, unsurprisingly, your child 'fails' to respond exactly as described in the 7 day plan that you must follow or catastrophe will ensue.  I say parents but in truth this does seem to be a downside of parenting that seems to assail mothers much more than fathers.  After all nobody and nothing will ever persuade me I am a bad mother.

I am no expert but I know that routine is good, however I also know that I get grumpy if I don't eat when hungry and don't sleep when tired.  If I move to a new house, school or job it takes time to work out a routine.  A baby is starting a new life so don't be surprised or dismayed if finding a workable routine is a matter of trial and error.

That is parenting in a nutshell: a lifetime or trial and error.  And if you are trying you must never, ever feel guilty.  You will get things wrong and your child will know you get things wrong and through that they will learn what it is to be human.  Getting things wrong does not include failing to give your toddler an exclusive diet of organic, home pureed vegetables.  Getting things wrong means exposing your children to experiences that they should be protected from and denying them experiences that will enrich them.  The complexity of parenting is that sometimes those can be one and the same experience.

But even then it is of supreme importance that you should parent without guilt.  Guilt wracks without benefit.  There is a place for guilt and that is when harm has been deliberately caused.  If your friends make you feel guilty when you are doing your best they are not your friends.  If the 'wisdom' of books makes you feel guilty when you are doing your best they are not wise.

Soft Play & Soft Suggestion

At the weekend I made my first visit to a place called Little Dinos which is a soft play area in North London that caters for children from 1 to about 7.  Soft play, to the uninitiated, is an absurd misnomer because though the surfaces are soft the speed with which the children deliberately or accidentally collide with each other is anything but.

Like all of these innovations this isn't about the children but about providing a safe space for frazzled parents who must leave their homes this instant before doing themselves, or worse, their child an injury.  What immediately struck me is that there were many, many more fathers than at any of the other baby friendly activities I had previously attended.  I noted that they all, like me, were sporting the de rigueur 'dad bod' that is without question the most dismayingly inescapable part of becoming a father.  I alone, however, was wearing chinos and cufflinks with my shirt rather than what seemed to be standard issue jeans and grey/black tee.  This was not a manifestation of fogeyism on my part but an ill timed attempt to placate my wife and satisfy her desire that I spend slightly less time wearing t-shirt and pants.

The thing about soft play is that creates the illusion of letting your guard down.  Because your child can't brain itself without a herculean effort at self harm you think you can take your neurotic anxiety down a few notches.  In reality, however, you have to watch like a hawk to ensure your child doesn't fall prey to the depredations of the miniature berserkers that beset the place.

This caused me to mull in a slightly disconnected way on the biggest lie about parents which is that they are in some angelic way any less selfish than the rest of us.  Ask any childless woman politician how pervasive this lie is and you'll get an earful.  True it is that having a child forces you to see beyond the end of your nose but that expanded vision stops abruptly at the start of your child's.

What would make soft play a genuinely interesting and instructive experience for parents is if, upon arrival, you were given responsibility for another parent's child and they yours.  It is only when you attend to the needs of another child and you have a chance to really scrutinise their personality that you can gain a prism through which to view your own.  What is more the default belief of many parents is that nobody on earth can really be trusted with the care of their child, this is nonsense and in times past children benefitted enormously from being passed hand to hand.  Variety is the spice of life and familiarity breeds contempt.

Of course our nearest and dearest will always take priority and charity does begin at home but a great good is done when we embrace our responsibilities to those that live beyond our four walls. Obviously my soft play suggestion is a pipe dream but what is a real possibility is offering our friends time off by taking their children under our wings, nothing could be more calculated to cement the bonds of friendship.