Because when you had your firstborns, you were, inexperienced and felt more scared, but as the second child came along, you’d, become, more experienced in childrearing, translated…
The moment I’d learned I was pregnant with my second baby, everybody I’d bumped into, would use a fawning tone of voice and mentioned that overly heard line, “First child by the book, second child raised more carelessly.”
To tell the truth, that made me a bit mad. After all, behind those words, there’s that sense of desperation—like being a second child, you deserved, to get raised up carelessly. And still, as I was, raising my younger son, I’d started gaining a different understanding of those words, and it’d become, quite interesting to me.
not my photograph…
I’d recalled how when my eldest daughter was born, my husband and I carried that guarded attitude, along with that fearfulness ab out it, hung on tightly, to the expert volumes on childrearing strategies. Most books stressed, that in order to raise a stable baby, “have a set schedule”, “establish a routine”, “parents can’t give in to the children’s cries”, are all important points; and so, as we’d faced our eldest daughter, it was, as if, we are, conducting, a serious “experiment”, carefully, followed the steps to the “t”, worried, that one wrong move, we may, ruin her life completely.
And still, after our second child arrived, we, who had become, more familiar with how to be parents, had already realized how to deal with children, from raising our firstborn daughter, and we’d become, more flexible when we teach our second son. Plus I’d become a full-time mom, I’d become outnumbered, two-to-one, and the younger brother was forced, to tag along with her older sister, and, he’d developed way ahead of the milestones that the books suggested. Since he was born, I’d carried the belief of “not taking the books to the t”, and, I’d become, more and more comfortable, in raising my young now.
And so, by the book and more relaxed, this showed a difference of attitude, but, it’d broken my belief of how it’s being unfair. The books, meant treating the child as someone without any emotions, as for pigs, they’re, cute little animals that are alive.
not my photograph still…
In the past, we’d thought that our kids are reactors, nothing more than a machine, operated by us, whatever you gave them, whatever, they put out, there’s NO reality in that, but now, we’d figured out, that our children are more of a biosphere, with their uniqueness and their own rhythms to develop, and all we needed to do, is observe, add in the nutrients as needed, and, show them respects, and, they will give us, a very beautiful patch of green, along with a star-filled skies.
Raising the young shouldn’t be a trial-by-error science experiment, but instead, a grand adventure, filled with a TON of excitements. We won’t destroy something making one tiny mistake on them, the children’s lives, will always have MORE possibilities than we will EVER be able to imagine.
So, this, is the transitions from being a first-time parent, walking on eggshells, worrying about messing your firstborns up, to having your second born child, and feeling more relaxed, and realizing, that each child is different from the other, that one size still does NOT fit all, and this can only be gained, through experiencing, not from the literatures that you thumb across in print!
Life, the Obstacle Course 