Being pregnant with your first child is such a fun ride.
There’s the smile that crosses your face whenever the baby moves, there’s the
wonder and awe at your once-familiar body’s transformation into a powerful
fertility goddess, there’s the back pain and the first trimester blahs, but,
most surprisingly, there’s the veritable shower of parenting opinions from
family, friends, and even the stranger at the grocery store.
This is a funny transition for me – a Montessori teacher
with an M.Ed and a number of years of early childhood education under my belt.
I sort of got used to being the “expert” in the room at parent teacher
conferences and monthly parent night presentations. (However, let it be known
that teachers are no experts - we’re learning all the time from the children,
much like parents. Once you haughtily declare that your classroom is “normalized”
or that you’ve figured out this whole teaching thing, another little love
arrives on scene and makes you rethink everything from scratch once again!)
But I do realize that I’m embarking on this parenting
journey with an interesting set of experiences under my belt, some of which
have prepared me directly for motherhood, others which might be a hindrance,
others which might be indirectly helpful. Obviously, guiding eighteen 3-6
year-olds on their paths of self-formation is a plus. One of the question marks
is my tendency to devour all books on alternative educational philosophy. I’m a
Montessorian by training, but I love Waldorf and I love unschooling. The one
thing I learned during my year teaching 5th grade at a public school
in the Bronx was that I strongly dislike traditional
education. It gives me the heeby-geebies. So how can I meld together what I
love most about these (often) differing parenting and educational philosophies?
It was only during a chat with my parents over the holidays
when I finally was able to concretely define my parenting philosophy – the
foundational maxims upon which all else is built. Here they are:
1. Respect and observe our child and do our best to respond
to his true needs.
2. Thoughtfully question any given philosophy (including
Montessori) and refer back to number 1 when implementing anything.
3. Be wary of any marketing to parents or children. That means
boo-hiss to Graco and Fischer-Price and
there’s-no-way-I’m-ever-shopping-at-Babies-R-Us. That means we choose natural
toys for our child and believe that less is more when it comes to “stuff” for
kids. Too much “stuff” stifles the child’s creativity.
I do have some strong opinions, (one being that plastic is
gross and just plain ugly, and I don’t want any of it anywhere near my baby) but
I will try not to let my opinions get in the way of observing the actual needs
of our child. I fully expect to learn and grow more than I ever thought
possible during this whole parenting journey, and I fully expect never to be an
expert. Phew! Isn’t that realization liberating? There is no absolutely right
way to raise a child, since each child and specific circumstance is different.
It is, however, difficult to start on a journey if you don’t have some sort of
map (or stars) with which to navigate. Our “destination” being a happy, healthy
adult who marvels in the world, we do have some specific ideas that seem to
provide a nice route from here to there (although, like any trip, there are
Plan B’s, detours, and yet unknown roads that might make us change our travel
plans).
Birth: We want a natural, peaceful birth for both our child
and ourselves. We are planning on giving birth with a midwife at a fabulous free-standing
birthing center in the area: www.ncbirthcenter.com.
For subsequent children, we would like to explore the option of a homebirth,
although our insurance options are extremely limited.
Diapering: We would like to try out Elimination
Communication (EC) with a cloth diaper back-up. I’m fascinated by EC, and I
didn’t even know about it until a fellow Montessorian tipped me off (thanks,
Jen!) If you are interested as well, I would highly recommend reading Diaper Free: The Gentle Wisdom of Natural Infant Hygiene
.
Babywearing and Co-sleeping: Yes. I’ve read loads of studies
that demonstrate the benefits of both of these practices. (I had a friend at
Notre Dame who took co-sleeping researcher James McKenna’s course, and I’ve
been convinced.) Also, living in close contact with the indigenous Tarahumara in Mexico made
me reflect upon the necessity of separate rooms and strollers for babies. These
things just seem so, well, unnecessary in the whole scheme of human existence. Not
that I think cribs and strollers are evil, I just choose not to spend my money
on them!
Breastfeeding: Of course. 'Nuff said.
Raising a bilingual child: Yes and no. I will speak Spanish
to my child (speaking to children in Spanish can seem more natural to me than
speaking in English!), but I won’t follow a strict routine. If I’m not feeling
it, I won’t put any pressure on myself in this area. There are always summers
to be spent with our friends and their children in Mexico,
and since I have such confidence that language learning can happen at any time
in life, I don’t feel that I’m doing our child a disservice by not speaking
Spanish consistently in the house.
Homeschooling: Yes. We are flirting
with the idea of opening our home as a learning community for a very small
handful of other young children, but I would still call that homeschooling. Our
homeschooling philosophy is anchored in the Montessori curriculum for young
children as I value a certain routine, rhythm and structure for the little ones
– I believe that this helps them to become confident actors in the world. I
have a fabulous collection of learning materials, some handmade, some gathered
from our world travels. But, at its core, our homeschooling philosophy is one
of child-guided, discovery-based learning – a melding of Montessori,
unschooling, and Waldorf.
So there you have it. A term-paper length parenting
manifesto blog post. If you made it to the end, I think you’re rad. I’m sure
we’d have so much to talk about over tea!
