How good of a parent do you think you would be without your brain? Now I realize that is a silly question because you couldn’t do anything without your brain, but I’m talking about the thinking part. My guess is that you would be a pretty damn good one. You see parenting just doesn’t require much intellect.
Now I don’t mean this in any way as an insult to us parents. What I’m trying to say is that parenting comes from a deep instinctual part of us that doesn’t require thought.
We create an inestimable amount of misery for ourselves because we try to parent from our heads instead of our guts or our hearts. Here’s an example for you. One of the biggest anxiety triggers among parents these days is sleep. “Little Johnny doesn’t sleep through the night. Little Johnny doesn’t comply with the nap schedule. Oh no, I missed Little Johnny’s sleep window!!!” Sound familiar?
The reality of it is that parenting is a moment-to-moment experience. The baby is constantly sending out signals or cues and then we as parents respond accordingly. We can plan all day long what little Johnny will need and how we will respond, but at the end of the day, we won’t really know if any of it will work until that moment.
Children’s bodies, like our own are designed so unbelievably well. They know exactly what they need, and the crazy thing is that we parents often know what they need too. We just make ourselves miserable by believing that the more we think, the more perfection we’ll be able to attain. The truth is that the more we think, the more we confuse ourselves and create suffering.
Try it out – I dare you to. Try to parent by instinct rather than thought. You might find that you’re a way better parent than you ever thought you were.