It is Tough to Spoil Your New Born

When your baby is born, along with sleepless nights and stress, one thing that comes is free and unsolicited advice. You are a new mother, thus, everyone around you thinks it is their birth right to teach you how to bring up your child. I remember I got loads of it for issues like breastfeeding to co-sleeping to diapers to carrying my baby. If you are a mother, you will relate to what I am saying.

I had waited years to be able to hold my little baby and now I was being told that if I carry her, she will get spoilt and will trouble me later. Who else will carry her and more importantly, whom should I hold and hug and cuddle? It is impossible to spoil a new born baby. For them the world was dark and they were protected inside the mother, and now once they face this big bad world, they need their mothers to provide them the security.

Babies cry because they have needs and that is the way they communicate. Comfort and love is their basic need apart from milk. I feel it is the job of a mother to provide them with what they need in the best possible way. When we as mothers react the way they want us to, they feel secure and comfortable and this instills a feeling of confidence in them. Once they feel confident and protected, you will notice that their frequency of crying becomes less. The bond and the trust the baby develops with their parents will ensure a happy baby.

Manipulations and tricks are something they do not learn in their mother’s womb. Rather, these are things we teach them and they start understanding these by the time they are about six to eight months. A response to a crying child will make them feel wanted and show that no matter what happens, the parents will be there always. A healthy bond is more important at this stage than thinking about manipulations.

Another thing that I have always felt in other areas too, is that what we do for our kids is something that is need of the hour. If you pick up a crying child does that mean you will need to pick up a 10-year-old in your lap and walk around. We cannot make a new born dependent, as they are born dependent. They learn to do things on their own as they grow up. Nature also makes them dependent and this is a need we as parents need to react to. This is not the time to make them self-sufficient and independent.

A mother’s love for her new born cannot spoil them. We as adults cannot even fathom the psychological and developmental changes a baby goes through, and in these times, they want comfort and security of their parents. If we ignore them to ensure we are not spoiling them will make them insecure and more irritable.

My parenting mantra is to be able to raise an emotionally strong and independent child. I am not a psychologist or a perfect mother, but I strongly feel, when we raise an emotionally stable child who believes in you, half the battle is won. Be it co sleeping, or feeding her on my own or picking her up and hugging her zillion times in a day, I do it all to be able to ensure she is confident and secured. As kids grow, we learn when and where to set boundaries. Once they are two, they understand things and have a little reasoning power. When they start crawling and walking, they will want to be independent and this feeling will just grow.

As long as they are small, we should cuddle and hug them as much as can. We must follow our motherly instincts as no one will ever understand a child better than the mother. They will not want to be picked up for long so enjoy till it lasts. Trust me, we do not spoil them, all we do is to give them the love, comfort and security that they need.  Remember, “You will never have this day with your child again. Tomorrow they will be older than they are today. Today is a gift.”