I was sitting with my two girls tonight. Penny was loudly demanding her milk, teddy, lovie AND blankie, all together, all delivered immediately by me. When I asked for a "please", she repeated the word sarcastically. When I said "your teddy is 3 feet in front of you, go pick him up yourself," she moaned and whined and yelled "get him for me!" Mabel, during this exchange, was crawling around the room. She was exploring alone, pulling herself up to stand, sometimes falling down, hard, on her butt. Then looking around, finding another place to explore, and heading there. She bumped her head on a chair, she toppled over a few times. No crying.
I thought about it for a minute. If Mabel had been my first kid, I would have been following her around the room, watching for any hint of imbalance, my arms precariously raised to catch her at any moment, so she wouldn't get hurt. In fact, I did that with Penny. I spent all of Penny's infant months in constant contact with her. Watching her every move, preventing falls, fulfilling requests. And the result of that was that her falls, when they happened, were worse. She was bad at recovering from a fall, she wouldn't catch herself, she never learned how. Mabel, on the other hand, has grown into a fearless adventurer, off to get the thing she wants as soon as she thinks of it, struggles be damned.
It made me realize that the thing that people often derogatorily refer to as "helicopter parenting" comes in two forms. One form is an aggressive, "you will be what I want you to be" type of parenting. But FAR more common is a fearful, protective well-meaning type of parenting. A parenting strategy that says "when I give attention to something, I do a better job at it" and "I will not emotionally neglect my child, I will always be there for her so she won't ever feel alone" and "if I love and protect her all the time, I can't go wrong."
But looking at my two girls, I realized that, actually, it's good to leave a kid alone sometimes. Obviously, everything is a matter of degree. If we're talking about parents who leave their kids alone in front of the tv for 6 hours a day, this message doesn't really apply. But if we're talking about parents who really, really try very hard to give their kids the best chance and the most support and the unquestionable message that they are loved, all the time, no matter what, this message is important.
Kids need time alone. They need for us not to be watching them sometimes. Not totally neglecting, just looking in another direction. I could hear today, from her little slappy hands on the floor, what part of the room Mabel was in. But I didn't see her, and she didn't see me, so for a few minutes at at time, she was, as far as she knew, alone. And when she fell down, she had to deal with it. And she seemed, really and truly, to love it. Penny didn't feel that until she was 2 years old. And I think I did her a disservice.
The funny thing is, when you give your kid a little space, you give yourself a little space too. And tonight, after Penny and I settled our dispute, and Mabel was happily pulling herself up to stand under the dining table, I read 5 pages of a novel, sitting on the couch. It was great. It's just another reminder that it's not a sustainable or natural parenting technique to spend all your time watching and worrying about your kid. You, as a mom, are expected by nature to have other things to do. So do them. You'll love it and so will your baby.
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