A new year—a new start. Something about the turning of the calendar brings hope. Hope for a better life, a better experience, a better way. Would you like a new start with your family? To get the most out of this new start, follow a plan.
How about a parenting plan that offers a vision of what to expect at each stage—a compass that gives direction and focus for your parenting? With goals for each stage of parenting in mind, you can build an approach to parenting that works for your family taking advantage of the hope of the new year for the energy to get started.
If you have an infant—
• Goal—create security. Completely vulnerable, infants helplessly depend on you to provide their every need. Children can only grow, learn, reach out to others if they possess a basic sense of security and trust that enables taking necessary risks. God designed infancy so that as you care for your baby, he learns the world—most especially you—can be trusted. This essential foundation for the rest of his life is laid, or lost, in the first twelve months making this stage absolutely critical to all the rest you will do in parenting. Take this next year to firmly establish security in your infant; he will live the rest of his life reaching outward in confidence trusting you, trusting the world, trusting he can accomplish all that is within him.
• How. Fortunately, God designed this stage with you in mind. He knew you would be new at parenting, so the early stages were designed to be very easy—take care of your infant. Every time you feed your child’s hunger, change his wet diaper, comfort his cries—he learns the world can be trusted to care for his needs. Though the early parenting can seem a little mundane, it is critically important. The very routine-ness of creates security in predictability.
So, that 2:00 a.m. feeding, that incredibly gross diaper, that night spent walking the floor trying to calm cries—those efforts are so much more than simply wiping spit-up or disposing of waste. They are the moments that bind your baby to you in trust. You become the white knight that takes away the bad and offers good. Every caring act becomes a deposit in his bank of trust. Deposit enough and you shape his subconscious to expect you to know best.
Though this won’t magically remove every conflict or battle of wills, it will indelibly shape his frame of reference toward believing in you and in the life you offer. Nothing else matters so much in all the parenting you will do.
If you spend the next 12 months simply caring for each need of your infant with gentleness, patience, and consistency—you lay a foundation of parenthood that reaps benefits for all the years to come.
Coming next--If you have a toddler--
