Opinion

Do you parent in a radically different way to your own parents?

Wednesday 7th of May 2014  |  Category: Opinion  |  Written by: Jocelyn Reading

Good question. I so want to shout 'yes!' to it, too, but alas I cannot...

Now, my children are only 4 and 1, so I've a long way to go yet before drawing full comparisons, and to be honest, it was largely my teen years that had me muttering about how I'd definitely not want to be like my mum. But, so far? Pretty similar, I think. Ask me in a decade, though, and we will see!

I am me, and my mum is she, so naturally we parent a little differently. Times are different, trends, opinions, even advice and safety varies enormously from when we were small - carry-cot just chucked on the back-seat of the car for me! My kids visit a naughty step, whereas I had a slap on the wrist. I really wanted to breastfeed my two, and baby led wean my youngest, whereas I was bottle fed and then weaned on mush. Times change, trends shift, but intrinsically, we're all still people.

Underneath it all, I've a feeling it's the same. I want my kids to be raised to have good manners, have lots of friends, enjoy the simple things in life like trips to the park and snuggling down with a good book. I want them to believe in themselves and all that they could achieve and I want them to enjoy their childhood and be happy. I suspect my parents wanted the exact same things for me, and they delivered. So it kind of makes sense to me to do a few things the same, and not necessarily consciously either. I parent how I parent because I am the person that my mother raised, I guess. No bad thing, I like to think.


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