When you have your first baby, you may soon also get your first reality check. You may not really have expected to deal with so much work, crying, burping, poop, pee-pee, and stress. You notice you are constantly tired, yearning for some undisturbed rest.
Wave your old days bye-bye, and Sign Up For It.
What no-one ever really told you is that babies like to pee when you change them, diapers can leak and burping can become a full time job. Infants love to be up at night and sleep during the day time; they can cry for apparently no reason and need you exactly at the time, when it is most inconvenient for you.
As these little angels grow older things do not always become easier, toddlers may still regularly wake up at night even when they are 2 years old, they will touch and chew on anything within their reach, and you have to be on consistent alert, knowing that your lovely baby follows his/her inner drive to restlessly investigate the new world.
There are an infinite number of expected and unexpected things your little ones will come up with, and my number 1 concept for Joyful Parenting is to Sign up for it:
I ________________ , hereby declare that I am fully aware of what to expect of my □ newborn, □ toddler □ 3-5 year old, □ school kid, □ teenager, and that I will consciously sign up for the whole package.
I sign up for extended burping, less sleep, more noise, extensive dirt, broken stuff, dirty clothes, pee, poop, vomit, tantrums, obvious and not so obvious lies, broken items, stickers on furniture, scribble scrabble on walls, destroyed furniture, dead frogs, toys everywhere, posters, muddy shoes and broken windows.
I sign up for having a 1.2 year old telling me NO and a 13 year old going through my drawers, I sign up for debates, arguments and very strange excuses. I sign up for tons of why-questions and discussions that are so confusing and disturbing, that I will consider hiring a professional.
I sign up for holes in my yard and a stone collection neatly lined up next to my bed, for holes in brand new pants, in walls, in pillows, carpets and curtains. I sign up for pages ripped out of my favorite books, chewed up magazines and the third set of blinds torn. I sign up for nightly-emergency-room-visits, sleep-overs, and smelly strangers being invited for dinner. I sign up for spaghetti sauce in the face, hair, ears, nose, neck, chest, tummy, legs and between the toes. I sign up for being rudely interrupted during conversations, sleep, telephone sessions, work, sex, leisure and meditation. I sign up for runny noses, buggers and tears, scratching, biting and pushing.
I sign up for all of the above and all the other expected unexpected things my creative child/ren will present.
To sign up to all these things may seem like a negative approach to negative behavior by expecting negative things, but if it were all that negative, the results could not be so positive.
We are not engaging in negativity, we are simply and consciously saying YES to life. Because life is going to happen; babies poop, toddlers cut hair, school kids avoid homework, and teenagers lie. When we have a high resistance to the things that are unavoidable we will respond with resistance (anger, hurt, disappointment, feeling overwhelmed, stress, negativity, impatience etc.)
When you accept these things as part of the deal, you have won half the battle. You will know that what you are experiencing is normal, you will not be surprised or stressed out or overwhelmed easily, you know what to expect and will prepare yourself accordingly, your responses will come from acceptance and understanding.
Sign up for your child, know what to expect, Child-proof your house, as if you were getting prepared for a tornado, get ready for the experience of a life time that lasts about 2 decades, and Take it with Humor.
You just read the first Chapter of the e-book Joyful Parenting. To read more go to http://joyfulparenting.truechanges.com/
