In my upbringing Natural Parenting was a total stigma. My parents’ parents were similar, so naturally my parents used the same approach of control, blame, and shame. Milder form, but still very hurtful, and harmful. I’m sure I’m not the only one to say that it felt strange, wrong and unnatural. Unfortunately that brought a lot of shields to my behavior, and a great deal of mysteriousness around my personal feelings. 

Becoming a mother is the best thing that has ever happened to me. I am deeply grateful for this journey. Since I didn’t want to rely on my parents’ advice, I turned to books, but that gave me vast knowledge but also confusion. I started with a Natural Parenting course approximately 9 months into my motherhood, followed by an Early Development course, and then, subsequently,  Personal Development. This gave me understanding what happened to my neurobiological setup, which brought clarity of my ‘strange’ impulses. It gave me a great deal of understanding of my baby girl’s emotional needs, outbursts, and tantrums. It gave me understanding why I want to, but I do not succeed with my intent to help my baby girl. No matter how much I would try, I would eventually fall back into my parent’s patterns. 

There are many stories to tell, but one that always comes up is, when my baby girl was about 2 years of age, the age of tantrums. Tantrums are ways of a child expressing his/her emotional states. They are still learning about what is that inner drive/emotional disturbance that we as adults perceive as tantrums. As children, we still are learning at that age how to express, so a child tantrums/expresses their feelings. They don’t know how to say ‘I am so mad because…’. This knowledge changed my world. But working through my triggers that would come up in me at the tantrum time, this changed my baby girls’ world, because I could hold a space for her. Triggers (in us adults from a child) are those implicit memories of personal childhood experiences: i.e. if our parents couldn’t handle our outbursts, our system cannot recognise patience towards our child’s outbursts, and we fall into the known (shout, discipline/control, shaming…). By holding space for my baby girl while she would throw a tantrum, by recognising her pain, discomfort and frustration, by authentically and calmly acknowledging my love towards her, now in the moment, her tantrums became shorter. Imagine, you get angry and someone tells you to f*** off and sends you to your room. How would you feel? And now imagine someone tells you “I feel your pain, I am here for you. I love you ”. There is a huge difference between acceptance and rejection. There is a difference between love and (perceived) hate. It builds an internal emotional intelligence and self acceptance. My baby girls’ tantrum at this time (sometimes) was 2.5 hours. The more I was ok, the more expressive she was, because I was not ok before, so now she had to give in, check in, and explore fully. After tantrums became shorter, and after some time (months), she gained emotional elasticity and now she comes in and out of any given emotion. She feels it, expresses it, gives time and space and then comes out of it. A beautiful emotional intelligence, and a dance of inner acceptance. 

It still takes time and work, but acknowledging and taking ownership of wrongdoing/unconscious reaction changes the form. Willingness to hear and explore with curiosity, removes the stigma and opens the door to my unique internal world. I don’t need books but my internal compass, emotional intelligence and the unique dance of emotional rising has begun. Grateful.