Finding Your Parenting Style

As the parent of a new baby I began to research parenting methods in order to find the parenting style that I felt was best for my child. I came across many different books, many different methods and many different theories on baby-parenting and child-rearing. None of them seemed to be exactly what I was looking for. Either the styles seemed to authoritarian or too permissive and some directly contradicted others. How was I supposed to parent this helpless little baby into a healthy adult?

I quickly realized that common sense and knowing my child were my two best parenting guides. There was no parenting book that would have all of the answers. There was no one style of parenting that would fit every family. There were a few parenting choices I had already made such as breastfeeding and co-sleeping that I decided to keep in place. Sure, I worried about nursing for comfort and how I would ever get my child to sleep in his own bed, but those practices were working for me at the moment and we were making it through each day with as few tears as possible.

When my son was about 6 weeks old he would spend his evenings crying. I knew little about the need for non-nutritive comfort sucking and he wouldn’t take a pacifier anyway. I did not want to become a human pacifier so I tried rocking, singing, bouncing, handing him over to daddy and everything else that the books told me might work. But after a couple of days I decided to try nursing him when his fussing began even if he’d just eaten 30 minutes ago. And it worked. The crying stopped. He was happy. He was comforted. I had listened to my instincts and done something that none of the books had recommended. By doing that I had proved to myself and son that I could take care of his needs.