Bringing Home Baby: We Just Need an Adult Here
When I was 27 years, 1 month, and 16 days old, I brought my first baby home from the hospital. He was 3 days, and a few hours old and I was on day 3 of my brand new and most important job yet. Motherhood.
As the daytime hours slowly bled into night, and all our visitors had gone, a looming sense of dread began to creep in. We were alone with a new baby and I had no idea what to do or how best to care for him. I kept thinking, you need a lot of training, experience, and a license to drive a car and yet you can just have a baby, bring it home from the hospital, and no one follows up on whether or not you know how to keep them alive? Shit. I called my mom as I was holding him in the rocking chair in the inky darkness of his room, my dread spiraling to all out panic. I tried to explain to her what I was feeling and what I needed. I finally blurted out, “we just need an adult here.” To which she gently responded, “Ashli, you are the adult.” Right. Double shit. What a terrifying thought.
If you know me well, you’d probably say I am a person who tries to do the “right” thing. If I am going to attempt something. I’m going to focus my energy on learning all about that thing. I’ll spend countless hours reading and researching about it to make sure I do, whatever it is, the “right” way. This inclination became an all out obsession as a young, inexperienced mom in charge of a new life. I read a million books, listened to experts, and called my pediatrician with a million questions. Their advice rapidly supplanted my own intuition. Let him “cry it out” the books and experts told me when sleep training was my latest parenting challenge to surmount. At naptime, I found myself crying in my garage so I couldn’t hear him screaming, alone in his crib. Wait, who is the one supposed to be crying it out here?
As the days, months, and years rolled by I relaxed a bit more. Not entirely, but a little. I had another child. I gained more experience and confidence. By my third baby, I developed enough faith in my own inner knowing to jettison all the rules I rigorously followed with my first. That third baby, well…he slept with us, nursed on demand, and I carried him EVERYWHERE despite the admonitions of well intentioned, experienced parents of another generation. “You’ll spoil him,” they said. “Oh well,” I thought. There are worse things.
When my children became school age, I started to focus on my career again. I was a pediatric speech therapist and ran my own practice, but was feeling less than fulfilled. I loved working with children but my role as a speech therapist started feeling like a pair of nonelastic pants after a delicious Thanksgiving dinner. Too tight. Too restrictive.
How I discovered playwork is its own story for another time, but it cracked open a whole new way for me to look at children and play. It redefined my view of play entirely and to say it upended my identity as a speech therapist would not be an exaggeration. Here’s the thing though. It didn’t upend my identity as a mother. In fact, the principles of play and playwork served to affirm what my motherly intuition was telling me all along.
What children need for play, I realized, are the very things experts tell us they need for their healthy growth and development. Go figure. They need time. Unscheduled time, unhurried time, unstructured time, free time. They need time to develop, to learn, to grow, and figure out what interests them. They need time to get bored. That’s where the real magic happens.
You know that saying “a watched pot never boils?” Well, that leads me to the next thing children need. Space. I don’t mean let them run feral to raise themselves. But adopting a little more of the Gen X experience of “come home when the streetlights turn on,” isn’t such a bad idea. Certainly a move away from the modern “helicopter parent" would be a step in the right direction. And, current research affirms this point of view. A recent and rapid decline in children’s mental health has been linked to a lack of independence and autonomy. We all need to feel like we are in charge of our own lives.
Lastly, children need a sense of place. They need an enriched and supportive environment that goes beyond the physical space. A place that provides them with feelings of empowerment and mastery over their surroundings. Charlotte Mason, a 19th century educator and author, said about teaching, “We spread an abundant and delicate feast in the programmes and each small guest assimilates what he can.” This idea of “spreading a feast” became a guiding principle for me the minute I read it. Children need to be exposed to materials and environments that inspire curiosity and wonder. And the great thing is, everyday things we adults find mundane, can ignite curiosity and wonder in a child. A box. A leaf. Cooking. A walk in the neighborhood.
I’m sharing this for all the new and seasoned parents who just want to get it “right.” When I relaxed, trusted myself, and listened to my inner knowing, I became more comfortable in this skin of motherhood. Identifying and relying on a basic set of principles (playworkers or otherwise) was a huge relief to me. I once asked my husband, “are we totally messing up our kids?” His response? “You know we are.” It was such a good reminder to surrender any notions of perfection and follow my own heart.
I’m also writing this for myself. Now a parent of not one, but two teenagers (and new drivers, Jesus take the wheel). Those parenting books and expert advice I relied on in their early years? Well, there seems to be a lot less geared toward raising teens. But that’s okay. Because, giving them time, space, and place seems to be working out just fine.