By Sonja Preston, Dunstan Baby Australia
When I am meeting with parents for the first time, I ask them 3 questions about their parenting:
Q1 What do you need?
Q2 What do you want?
Q3 What do you fear?
These are the sort of answers I get:
1 More sleep, the laundry done, my mum here.
2 Her/his crying to stop, to know what s/he wants, another pair of hands to help me.
3 Not knowing what s/he wants, not knowing what to do, that I’m going to fail.
In all of these, the overriding feeling is one of a lack of confidence – in both their knowledge and in their ability.
Confidence comes from both KNOWLEDGE and PRACTICE.
At Dunstan Baby Australia, this is what we are skilled at – giving you the knowledge you need to know about your newborn, and we support you in practising that knowledge until you feel it’s automatic.
Think about it… before you were a successful driver, you needed to have the courage to give it a go, to practise, and to keep at it even when you made mistakes or couldn’t change gears without ‘crunching’ it.
Or when you went for the job interview for a position you really wanted – you may have had mock interviews with your friend’s support, and even practised in front of the mirror, to make sure you knew what to say and how you looked.
You need to be a bit courageous to start – the driving lesson, the prep for a job interview, and in your parenting. Just like getting your ‘L’ plates when you first start to learn to drive. Remember all those errors you first made – you forgot to indicate, or you didn’t engage the clutch. You had some knowledge, and you were doing the practice you needed. After some time, it all becomes second nature, and you don’t have to think too much.
