I think most of us – prior to actually having a child – has this idea of how our parenting style will be.
And then you actually
have a baby, and realise that – yikes – this is actually
a lot harder than you thought it was going to be, and somewhere around the time when your child turns three, my bet is that most of us look back at all those notions and ideas and convictions we had back when we were still trying for a baby or pregnant, and actually laugh out loud at how naive and gullible and flat out delusional we were back then.
I mean; come
on. We all live and learn, and pick up tricks and tips and knowledge along the way, and this is no doubt part of the reason we often parent our firstborn children somewhat different to any subsequent children.
Recently, mum-of-three Jennifer Garner, revealed she definitively parents her little boy, Samuel, different to how she parented her two daughters, who are now 14 and 11.
In an interview on the podcast
Mom Brain, Garner said that someone told her that she needs to prepare her child for the path, not the path for her child, and that this phrase changed how she now sees parenting – and hence how she ended up parenting her son differently than she did her daughters.
According to
Pure Wow, Garner said that when she first became a parent she would try to "prepare the path" for Violet, such as by making sure that everyone was quiet when the baby napped. But now, three kids in, she views things a little differently, and says she focuses on making sure her kids are aware of how they impact other people and not just the other way around.
Like most of us, the 48-year-old said that before having Violet, her firstborn, she read all the books and obeyed all the parenting advice that she was given, but the truth is that 'raising kids is a journey and you learn things along the way.'
Preach, Jen.
Now, Garner, admits, she feels like it's important for kids to learn how to handle life's ups and downs at some point, and taking the philosophy that you prepare your child for the path, not the other way around, can make a big difference.
On the podcast, the actress talked about how her kids are dealing with the pandemic, and how they are all learning the art of resilience right now.
“I feel the same way about resilience that I do about gratitude,” she said. “You can’t tell your child to be resilient, that’s so condescending. ‘Be resilient…You be resilient!’ But you can point out to them, ‘You know what’s happening right now? It’s that you are rising to a really tough occasion, and I am seeing something in you that I hope you’re really feeling proud of because this is not easy and you’re doing it.’”
