My husband once posed a statement to me that he did not know how to be a parent. "How do you know how to be a husband?" I asked. His look was strange and he told me, "I do not – I just do it."
It baffled me and begged the question, "How do any of us know how to be parents?" In truth we learn most of our parenting from our parents and they learned from the parents before them. We each bring our experience and try and change the things we did not like in our childhood and create our families. What I find interesting is when a large majority wake up one day and say, "I have become my mother". I laughed the first time I had that statement because I spent so much of my life saying I would never be like my mother and yet here I was at 32 saying I am my mother. Now I do not have all the same talents as her or even same interests, but I do have some of her traits when it comes to raising my children.
As I grew I was engraved with the parenting skills of my parents and found that although I may have slightly different style or approach we all have the same goals. We want our children to grow up happy, healthy, and successful. We want to teach our children the way of the past so they do not repeat our mistakes in the future.
There is no perfect parent and most of us fall back onto our roots when we are posed with situations we have not encountered with our children. Stepping beyond our roots some parents have learned to research other parenting styles, information, and tips to utilize in their own way. These parents are not denying their childhood but agree that we need to bring more to the table for our children.
Yes there are parents who do not follow the pattern and in a lot of these cases there is an underlying cause. Even as parents they still fall to their roots whether they be good or bad.
I am one who finds research not only about myself but child stages to be helpful in preparing me for future, but the one thing that will carry me beyond is my experiences and how I handle them as a whole.
To answer my husbands statement I say you do not have to know how to be a parent you just are, and you may not know all to do, but you just do. You research and learn so you can be better at parenting, between research and your experiences you can be the best parent you know how to be.
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