Experience Yourself As a Great Parent

What's possible for you as a parent?

Have you thought about the options?

Will you access your authentic 'voice' as you evolve and explore?

Do you feel as if you could do better?

Do you feel overwhelmed with all the choices, or with differences with your partner?

How would it feel to experience yourself as a great parent?

What's possible?

I'm offering sample coaching sessions to help you tap into the compelling, irresistible vision you have (even if it's buried!) of yourself as a great parent. Together we will discover some of the qualities that are important to you. I'll help you compile a "mini toolbox" of strategies for accessing these qualities when you feel challenged, overwhelmed, and not in touch with yourself as a great parent.

Free, VERY limited time offer of intro 45 minute sessions now scheduling. Call 303.776.8100 or email babyparentingcoach@gmail.com today

See yourself as a great parent, learn to develop the skills that will take you there.

Ingrid Johnson

The Baby Parenting Coach

303.776.8100

http://www.babyshaman.com/

babyparentingcoach.blogspot.com

Your 'Parenting Style'?

Where did it come from?


How does it evolve?


Why does it matter?





Today the gamut of choices in how to parent your baby range from 'attachment' parenting to turning over your infant to full time childcare at age 6 weeks. Every imaginable variation in between is evident, with stay-at-home dads, nanny-sharing, parents who work from home, grandparents who raise babies, and many other adaptations.



Finding your 'parenting style' can be daunting. Because being a parent is a uniquely multi-layered undertaking, your choices for parenting will affect you, your child, your family, and the rest of us in ways that are difficult to fully comprehend at the start. Some time in the distant future, if you have the opportunity and inclination, you may look back and reflect on the underlying patterns and behaviors you helped create. Most of us are so involved in dealing with the immediate aspects of becoming a parent ("Am I really completely responsible for this tiny, dependent being? I'm scared, overwhelmed, clueless. Why don't I instinctively know what to do? Who left ME in charge?) we seldom fully explore our fears and insecurities that get triggered.



In an ideal world, when contemplating becoming parents, you would set aside plenty of time to spend with friends and family who are parents, experience and explore the different approaches, try on what feels authentic to you, and mindfully, and in complete agreement with your partner, choose what would work best for you. Then when your baby entered the world, you would smoothly and seamlessly implement that plan. Needless to say, that is far from what happens for most of us.



Reality looks more like taking wishes and dreams you have about how you'd like to parent, compressing them into your real lifestyle (you and your partner may or may not agree on key parenting issues, you may have taken a parenting class and resonated with the approach or not, your reading may have offered some interesting options). Some combination of resources and choices land you in the orientation where you start your parenting experience. Throw in the unpredictability of the individual baby's temperament (which may be entirely different than siblings!), and you are in a fairly 'wing it' mode.



You can see how being flexible can greatly increase your odds for success. How comfortable are you with trying something that was not in your original plan? Where do you go for resources to find a different approach, if your current one is not working so well? How do you keep track of what you may want to implement when you are overwhelmed, tired, and stressed?



It's easy to see that an effective 'parenting style' requires both a high degree of flexibility and a keen self-awareness. It's a work in progress, and if your parenting style is not continuously evolving, it probably is not working very well. There are no concrete plans or programs for effectively raising a child. Many valuable resources exist for reference, but your challenge is to manifest your own unique 'parenting style' that is authentic and effective for you, your baby, and your family.



The more clarity you have about your own values and beliefs, your partner's values and beliefs, how they mesh and how they don't, and what your various support mechanisms are, the better you start. With that, ongoing support and flexibility are key.



My intro CD "OMG! I'm A Parent!!" discusses these concepts and others. It's available at my website http://www.babyshaman.com/

Ongoing individualized support is available by email and phone. Contact me to hear about the 'spring start' special for March.

Ingrid Johnson

303.776.8100

http://www.babyshaman.com/

READ to your baby, READ

Long before your baby is born, the sound of your voice is imprinted as a familiar and comforting sound. You can substitute the word "SING" in the title, also. Your voice is incredibly powerful as a connection to your baby, before and after she is born.

Reading to a very young infant creates a bond and a learning experience. Your voice communicating a story, or just talking about the pictures in a book, makes a context for reference that your baby will carry forward. The ritual of reading to an infant is part of connecting in a reassuring, warm way with a process that will continue to give rewards for many years.

As your baby starts to look at the pictures, and becomes familiar with certain favorite characters and stories, you will see the anticipation and pleasure that she gets from hearing certain words and phrases. Of course, singing, adding sound effects, and any other creative additions you are inspired to do are wonderful. But even at the very most basic level of opening a book and reading the contents every night at bedtime, you are establishing a lifelong precedent for reading.

The benefit to the parent doing the reading is that you will be brought into the present moment, and you can let go of other stresses and worries. Just being present, however simple the story, however many times it's been read before, can give a few minutes of refreshment to the busy, harried parent.

Reading in multiple languages is another enhancement from which your baby will benefit. If this is an option for you, please use it. The early exposure to different languages lays the groundwork for a facility with languages later.

Instilling a love for books and reading is a gift to which the benefits are endless. Lifelong learning begins in infancy (and before!), and reading to your baby is an excellent way to start.

Powerful Babies

Self-expression in one who is not yet verbal has to assume some other mode. Learning your baby's cues and responding to them effectively can make parenting a much more pleasant experience. For a young baby, responding promptly usually means the physical need of being held (assuming hunger and clothing have already been addressed). If your baby is successful in connecting with you and getting you to act on her behalf, she will have overcome her helplessness.

When we are not able to identify the particular need of our baby in a given moment, we can still validate her choice of how she feels at that moment, and connect with love, affection, and understanding. This is a large part of what being a parent to an infant is about - making yourself available to another who is physically very limited in her ability to take care of her own needs.

There is an enormous amount of misinformation available to parents about 'teaching' babies to comfort themselves. As they get older, children gradually use more words instead of cues or crying. As a parent, it's pure wisdom to understand and encourage this. Your child deserves to be taught that it is okay to express physical and emotional pain. An emotional pattern for her lifetime is created by how you respond to her while she's a baby.

Shaping Your Baby's Immunity

In utero, and long before birth, you help determine the strength and resilience of your baby's immune system. The many subtle (and not so subtle) factors that affect a fetus are part of the response to allergens, virus, bacteria, and a host of other challenges to your baby's immune system.

While it seems sometimes overwhelming to try to be aware of everything you consume or are exposed to during pregnancy, the reality is that your unborn baby is experiencing it all, too. Obviously, your choices of what you eat, how you handle stress, and what you do for recreation all affect your own wellness and biochemistry. By the time you baby is born, the basic pattern she experiences is already in many ways a reflection of your choices.

This can be an exciting and inspiring piece of information. I know several couples who played beautiful music for their unborn child, and then got to witness the recognition and joy in their baby when she heard the same music again after birth. While we are quick to notice that a baby has a relative's physical features, it's not as common to trace the baby's characteristics to more subtle influences.

Your own ability to express feelings in a healthy way is the best contribution you can make to your baby's immune system (assuming you are already eating healthy and getting exercise and rest). Take the time to inventory where you could improve, and get the support to take the next step.

Of course, all of the above is also true for your infant as she grows. Being exposed to toxins and feeling abandoned or ignored all contribute to biochemical changes that are not optimum for health. Modulating and shielding your baby from these types of disturbances can go along way to minimizing effects.

Your Baby's Brain

From birth to age 3, profound changes and growth are occurring in your baby's brain. Developmentally, every 3 years is a marked cycle of changes and types of growth. I believe if we all knew what the 0-3 growth was really about, we would be more selective in the environments we create for our babies.

It's a pretty good analogy to say that your baby is like a 'sponge' at these ages, and developmentally, taking in everything in her surroundings is part of the plan. "Pruning" of brain synapses happens, with or without our input. For optimum brain development, reducing or eliminating negative stress for your baby is a huge gift you can give. This means minimizing sensory overload, modulating loud or new experiences, and develping an awareness of what your baby does and doesn't like to be around.

It's documented with 'hard' science now that if a baby's brain is unduly overloaded with stress, there is a cascade of events that result in your baby actually 'shutting down' and learning that the world is a hostile, unfriendly environment. The cumulative effect of these kinds of experiences result in a young child out of touch with her own internal feedback. It sets up young children to be dependent entirely on outside sources for making decisions about what they need and want (easy to see how this can be a precursor to a lifetime of eating disorders, substance abuse, behavioral difficulties, etc.)

Please educate yourself as a parent about the extremely dynamic growth happening in your baby's brain. Your choices in how you interact and the environments that you create for her will shape her lifelong experience.

Your Baby As Your Mirror

A week from today I'll be at Pharmaca Integrative Pharmacy in South Boulder with parents of babies and toddlers. Our general topic is how to grow as a person while you're parenting. Everyone is invited, Friday at 3 pm or Saturday at 12:30. Please tell your friends who live in the Boulder area.

My CD, "OMG! I'm A Parent!!" will be available for only $15 (no shipping and handling, which is included in the website price).

Understanding ourselves and the patterns and behaviors we bring to parenting is more than valuable - it's an insight into what you will be experiencing in the entire parenting process. The reflection of our most desired, as well as least favorite traits, will invariably be reflected back to us by our children. The sooner that is taken into account, the more choices you have in how to modulate your own behaviors.

Taking time to reflect on where we are on the continuum of self-awareness is time well spent, even in the very early hectic and harried parenting years. As more and more research emerges on baby brain development, it continues to consistenly show that babies brains absorb all that is going on around them. As adults, we have sophisticated strategies in place to be more or less aware of certain things, depending on our orientation. Babies do not have these filters yet, so they are getting everything, conscious and unconscious, to which they are exposed. Keeping that in mind can help motivate parents to examine, edit, and revise their own patterns.

Join us for information and fun-filled time at South Boulder Pharmaca next week!
All your questions and comments are always wecome.

Ingrid Johnson
303.776.8100
babyparentingcoach@gmail.com
babyparentincoach.blogspot.com
www.BabyShaman.com