Six and a half years ago they gave me the father's card and since then my life, my friends and many of the conversations in which I participate have the p (m) aternity, children and parenting as the main axis. In all this time there are many fathers and mothers with whom I have been able to talk (it helps to be a pediatric nurse) and there are many occasions when you see that they feel alone, pressured and sometimes, on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
I have felt that pressure myself, that breath in the neck of the nearest environment and I have even noticed the stares of others in my work (perhaps they are my imaginations) waiting to see how I act. The fact is that there are many issues related to parenting that lead me to conclude (and explain below) that Being a father is very hard when the closest environment does not support you.
Surely you and you will be able to explain more situations than me and you will most likely agree with others with me, but I will make a brief summary of those in which I as a father have felt more pressured, sometimes to the point of doubting both myself and my decisions that almost convinced me.
I know that advice is usually well-intentioned, but, as I always say, he who advises cannot demand that his advice be followed and, the one who is advised, can do with that information what he wants: listen to it, internalize it and change it, listen to it and take it into account, but not change his way of doing things, listen to it and directly discard it or here it enters me and here (pointing to the opposite ear) comes out. This last option is usually used when you have not asked for any advice, of course.
So many arms are not good
The first time they made me doubt as a father was when, a few days after Jon was born, my first child, a lady (invited to my house, but that I had just met) told me that “oops, you have it too long in arms ”, with that expression of“ mecachis ”on the face and the repressed gesture of tearing the child from my arms to leave it in the cradle.
I stayed in pictures, so much, that I didn't even know what to say. Not that I had to defend my position as a father bracer, is that simply I didn't know there was a problem called excessive time in my arms. At night I asked Miriam if he thought we took it too much and agreed that it was not a matter of time, but of necessity: either we took it for so long, or cried, so we decided to stay the same.
With the passage of time many people, familiar and unknown, have had the detail of worrying about our arms and our backs, the absence of a stroller ("but do not you have?"), As if we could not buy it, and the emotional health of our little ones, who by now should be asking for time at the psychologist for social incompetent.
Breastfeed, woman, but not long
Another problematic issue is that of children's feeding. It is even here on the blog, where we often discuss breastfeeding and artificial milk feeding. Most of our mothers breastfed us for a few months and, when it seemed that it was not going very well, which used to coincide with the three-month crisis, they passed to the bottle.
For whatever reason breastfeeding rates went down and down until a few years ago the thing began to pick up thanks, above all, to the information that claimed that The most natural, normal and beneficial for a baby was to drink milk from his mother after birth.
Up there, everyone agrees. The problem is when a mother decides not to breastfeed. I have heard nurses say, "Well, you don't know what evil you are doing to your child," as if those mothers had decided to slowly kill their children. Many other conversations I have not heard, but you don't have to be very lucid to know that many mothers are directly criticized for not feeding their children with breast milk.
Another problem is when a mother does breastfeed her baby but time starts to pass. First the three month barrier is crossed, the one in which our mothers stopped giving us. Then the six is transferred, at which time it was said that milk was already like water. Then the teeth appear and he hears, "What if he bites you?"
Then the child turns one year old, and of course, that of seeing him eating bread, walking alone and suddenly sucking, is strange. Over this age I have also heard nurses say "well you do not know the evil you are doing to your child", which is the same thing they said to the others for not breastfeeding.
Then the child continues to grow, turns two, and the mother has become a dresser who doesn't know how to stop, the child in a spouse who believes he can have his mother available at any time and the worst, the worst of all is: what will people say when they see that you are breastfeeding your child? And even worse, if it's the grandmother: And what will the people of the neighborhood say, my friends and acquaintances, when I see that my daughter still breastfeeds my grandson?
I would not spoil that
Children grow up and one day, that baby who looked like a teddy bear that only ate, slept, groaned or cried and stained diapers suddenly walks, touches things, speaks and acquires autonomy. Oh pardiez !, the child turns out that he has the capacity to choose and decide, sometimes he says yes and sometimes he says no and, normally, he answers the opposite to what you want him to answer.
Nothing happens at home, it is growing, it is communicating and it is creating its own “I”, its personality. But of course, this can also happen in public, or at the home of grandparents, or in a place where there are well-known people and, your son, your grandson of the soul, is the most handsome, the best, so “honey, precious, Do not leave me wrong in front of my friends, that they see that you are in a good crib ”(it shows that I think of grandma, right?)
Well, at home, everyone who pays you for what, but you have infinite patience and have decided to talk to the child, talk, explain the consequences of their actions and, little by little, grow together respecting things and respecting each other. But of course, the child messes with you in the presence of your surroundings and that is where things don't seem to go so well.
With your infinite patience you talk to your child, you use dialogue and you do it knowing that educating children is not a matter of one day, but of months, years, time of perseverance and perseverance, sometimes leaving more freedom and others leaving less, but a matter of time after all.
However, people around you do not see it that way. They see a concrete act and see the instantaneous solution: "I would not consent to that", "And you don't think about it?", "You have to punish him", "A good slap gave me and at a time solved" , "You're too soft," "A week with me and I'll show you back."
We'll continue tomorrow
Surely you have things to do, prepare breakfast, dress the children and your partner asking where you put your black t-shirt, the one you never use but today, go to know why (he will have dreamed about it) has decided to going to put ... black, with which it is falling.
Well, what I was going to, tomorrow we continue with more situations in which the environment pressures parents and I will try to reach a conclusion (if it doesn't give me a jamacuco for putting on a black shirt in the heatwave).
Here the next post.
Photos | Karen Sheets de Gracia, Tommy Botello Photography on Flickr
In Babies and more | When grandparents get in the way too much, How are nursing women (depending on the eyes they look at), Why is it so difficult sometimes to educate our children (I) and (II)
