You cannot mess up your kids for life if you:
- 1. Have pain relief during labor and delivery
- 2. Have a caesarean section
- 3. Don’t use a doula or midwife
- 4. Give birth in a hospital with a doctor
- 5. Don’t breastfeed
- 6. Bottlefeed formula
- 7. Breastfeed and give formula
- 8. Don’t pump your breast milk
- 9. Give a pacifier
- 10. Let the baby “cry it out“
- 11. Don’t let them sleep with you
- 12. Don’t make your own baby food
- 13. Let them watch TV
- 14. Don’t use organic products
- 15. Give them occasional sweets
- 16. Give them apple juice
- 17. Work outside the home
- 18. Get divorced (but don’t divorce the kid)
You may mess up you kids for life if you:
- 1. Obsess over, feel guilt or shame about your caesarean or not breastfeeding
- 2. Are often preoccupied with something else while you are with them
- 3. Are unhappy being home all day with a baby/child
- 4. Don’t teach them manners
- 5. Don’t make them feel like the most important thing in the world to you
- 6. Don’t have realistic expectations of them and yourself
- 7. Do their homework
- 8. Spoil them by giving them everything they want, when they want it
- 9. Don’t read to them
- 10. Don’t admit your mistakes
- 11. Expect them to live the life you want for them or would have wanted for yourself
- 12. Want to be their best friend
- 13. Don’t teach them to clean up after themselves
- 14. Don’t discipline consistently, firmly, and kindly
You will mess up your kid for life if you
- 1. Fail to impose order on the chaos that is their world
- 2. Don’t immunize them
- 3. Don’t use a car seat
- 4. Humiliate or diminish them
- 5. Withhold your love (which is not the same as withholding your approval)
- 6. Ignore their emotional, physical, and spiritual needs
Remember: You’ll make mistakes. Lots of them. It’s OK. Luckily, resilience is hard-wired in kids. Don’t be hard on yourself.
Also remember: You will be the one with gray hair. You will never see a kid with gray hair that their parents gave to them.
