Parenting & Slings
You’ve had your baby, they’re no longer tiny and passive, now what?!
So much of pregnancy time is spent on birth preparation, rightfully so, but then baby arrives, life changes forever, and the visitors go back home. Now the real fun begins!
How we parent our children, especially throughout the first three years matters immensely, not just to their emotional well-being but also for their overall physical health long-term. It can totally feel like a new stage of development begins every time you’ve finally found your groove with the last one.
Fear not, you’ve got this, and I’m here to help.
Parenting & Slings
Parent Mentoring
Does it feel like your toddler’s outburst have you tiptoeing around your own home? Have you shouted and now feel horrible? Are you finding it hard to hear your own intuition amongst the noise of social media parenting advice?
Broadly speaking there are three types of parenting: Authoritarian, Permissive, and Authoritative. And they each come with certain beliefs and values about parenting.
Authoritarian Parenting
Authoritarian parenting centres the parents. They are the boss, they make the rules, it’s the children’s job to listen and do as they are told. How well parenting is going is measured in how well children behave.
Permissive Parenting
Permissive parents centres the children’s happiness. There are few expectations, even fewer boundaries, and the kids decide most things. Children’s emotions are the measurement for how well parenting is going.
Authoritative Parenting
Authoritative Parenting aims at considering the entire family unit and sets developmentally appropriate expectations and boundaries for everyone to adhere to.
In comparing these types or parenting strategies, authoritative parenting quite obviously stands out as an approach that balances power, control, and leadership. This is a power-with dynamic where everyone’s needs matter and the family unit works towards learning necessary skills and strategies to ensure a collaborative and structured family life. Here, the parents’ ability to self-regulate and the children’s progress on mastering developmentally appropriate skills are both measures for how well it’s going.
You can find a whole host of articles in my blog about the context and consequences of different parenting style. For now, let’s just say that research is very clear: The most wholesome way to raise your children is as an authoritative parent where you show leadership and collaboration instead of control or permissiveness. Other names for authoritative parenting philosophies are Gentle Parenting, Respectful Parenting (RIE), or Attachment Parenting, and both Waldorf and Montessori philosophies fall under this umbrella, too.
After more than 10 years of parenting a vast amount of children in different circumstances, I do both, empathise with how overwhelming parenting can feel if you’re doing it right, and also help you find strategies to move through challenges with your kids, one day at a time.
What do we do
in Parent Mentoring?
– Learn about the difference of boundaries, demands, rules, and agreements
– Understand how your own childhood has impacted you (and find resolve)
– Mediate conflict in your parenting or co-parenting dynamic
– Explore strategies to playfully help your children manage impulses and behaviours
– Find the right approach for your family to tackle sleep, potty training, school starts and daily routines
and most importantly
– Hold space so you can vent, because parenting can be hard AF sometimes!
Baby Wearing
Did you know that in some cultures, new mothers wear a pillow around their post-partum belly to make the transition from bump to baby easier? When I studied in India, I talked to a mother of twins who was a baby wearing virtuoso. She really had mastered the fourth trimester and between Ayurvedic diet, frequent massage, and a strong sense of ceremony and ritual, she also had grown into the habit of using cloth and fabric to make her life easier. From belly binding to baby wearing multiple children at once – she had it covered! The images of her colourful fabrics and normalcy of nourishing maternal mental health post-partum has forever transformed me.
Baby wearing can massively improve everyone’s mental health in the early days post-partum.
Parents and babies can bond through closeness and snuggles. Older siblings don’t have to feel like they’re being left out. Breastfeeding is easier to establish, especially if staying indoors isn’t always possible. Maternal mental health is shown to increase and postnatal depression is less likely to occur. Dads can help out and bond in meaningful ways. Baby sleep can be positively impacted, and sling wearing even counts as tummy time! There are so many reasons that would make us question why baby wearing isn’t taught and encouraged by healthcare providers everywhere!
In fact, Western humans seem to be the only mammals who don’t keep their newborns close at all times, isn’t that mind boggling?!
And while baby wearing isn’t the only way to safely bond with a newborn, it’s benefits are now even scientifically proven.
I’d love to share my passion for baby wearing with you in a sling consultation. Whether you are fighting with a sling you already have, would like to try different types of carriers, have run into a particular struggle, or are a complete novice when it comes to slings and wraps – I’ve got you!
As a formally trained sling consultant with Carrying Matters, I have more than a decade of experience in carrying children of different ages in vast varieties of ways. Newborn snuggles, multiples, back carries, woven wraps, and more. There’s no bounds to the fun that waits!
Free
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30 mins to connect with me
Easy access via Zoom
Ask your questions freely
Parenting Mentoring
£60
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personalised care for you and your family
shout less, connect more
playful strategies to teach behavioural and social skills to little ones
Compassionate support for new and seasoned parents
Sling Consultant
£60
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