Perspective

I find that perspective is so important in parenting. Your perspective can change any given situation. What for some could be an insignificant interaction could be extremely important to another. Thus one of the most important tools in parenting is being aware and managing your own perspective. You can't control your children but you control your reaction to them by changing your perspective.

Mike once told me about an article he read when that killer whale killed its trainer. Apparently the reason these whales who are supposed to be harmless to humans sometimes become psychotic in the tanks they swim in. Killer whales swim thousands of miles a day up and down the coastlines in the wild. In captivity they swim those thousands of miles in circles in a tank. This eventually brings them to a psychotic break or so Mike told me I didn't fact check. When Conor was learning to walk I understood how those killer whales might go a little crazy.

He walked just in time for Halloween!

Conor had a lot of difficulty learning to walk. As we later learned he had low muscle tone. Yesterday I learned his muscle tone is lowest in his ankles. Poor kid no wonder he couldn't walk.  He couldn't walk independently I should say. He LOVED to walk! He just needed your hand. And any parent knows those days where your child is learning to walk, though exciting, is backbreaking. They are not quite tall enough that you have to bend over just a little and they are so eager they want to walk everywhere! Well Conor wanted to walk all the time so he walked up and down my little house. I had to walk with him. He did this from 11 months old until he walked at 17 months. Up and down from front door to back door. I often thought of those poor killer whales.

When I would start to identify with those killer whales I would get Conor's shoes on and take him outside so we could walk the block. People would say "oh he's walking!" and I would begrudgingly respond "not yet". Then I wold inevitably be told that I will wish he wasn't walking when he learned how. Conor finally walked 3 months ago. As for all parents I was so excited when he walked. But unlike what people told me I have never in the last 3 months wished he couldn't walk. Even in his most difficult moments pulling items off the shelves in the grocery stores I know I would rather that then feel like those whales again.

I find a lot of those moments with Conor where my perspective seems so different. And moments when I realize how differently a situation can be interpreted with another perspective. One of the first words I was able to get Conor to understand was "no". When he was beginning to understand the word no I would get one of two reactions when I said it. The first was no response at all. This of course meant that he would continue with what he was doing. The second was for him to look at me, shake his head no and then stop what he was doing. To most people it looked like Conor was asserting his independence and telling me no (he was old enough at the time for this to be what a lot of kids would do). But to me I knew that Conor shaking his head no meant that he was understanding what I said and would follow the direction. Parents would sigh and tell me something like "they always learn no first". I'd want to explain that he was actually following directions but that would be to complicated. Its just all in perspective.

I'm almost positive perspective is what got me through 9 months of morning sickness too. I'm almost sure if I hadn't thought I'd never have a kid that those 9 months would have convinced me I never wanted another one. Luckily I still want more. But maybe when Conor is more independent.