I find myself and a lot of the moms I know going through all kinds of hoops (and guilt) trying to raise their kids "just right." And obviously, we should try to fulfill this awesome responsibility to the best we can, but we need to also remember that our children are first children of God's, with their own soul, own free will, and own path to take to Him.
A mom this beautiful article on her own parenting experience. A quote I really liked is "In the end, our children were created to fulfill not our own will but God's".
http://www.insidecatholic.com/feature/detachment-parenting-learning-to-let-go.html
2 comments:
Very good reminder. I expected to hate this article, since we are big fans of attachment parenting and find it to really fall in line with "Catholic parenting," as Greg and Lisa Popcak write about in their book, "Parenting with Grace," but wound up really enjoying it.
As Mina is growing into her 2s rather quickly, I'm struggling with determining when she is outright defying me, or when she just needs something (food, sleep, a little extra attention). And recently, when she started to hit 2 of her friends when they were having trouble sharing toys, I was mortified. I had to remind myself that she's first of all, 2, and that, sadly, she is a fallen creature.
One book I highly recommend is, "The Science of Parenting." It's helped me immensely in determining what her tantrums stem from, and to distinguish distress tantrums from "little nero" (willful) tantrums, and just understanding her overall. It also helped me learn that "no" is not a bad thing. She needs to learn to say no because there are many times when saying "no" is appropriate. It's not a matter of raising a child who never gets upset, it's about raising a child who knows how to deal properly with those feelings when something does upset her.
Thanks for the post!
I'm glad you liked it! I almost changed the title because it seems like attachment parenting tends to make people run hot either in defending or attacking it - but I also thought that it would spark people's interest more. So I left it.
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