I'm not the Mom I thought I'd be....

[BlueWaterAnnie]

.....or am I?

I thought I'd be the uber crunchy AP mom who never turned on the TV. Right now, DD, 2.5 is watching Kai-Lan as I type this. I justify it since she's Asian and Kai-Lan is a good Asian role model. :shrug3

DD is also familiar with Blue's Clues, Wonder Pets and Olivia. Olivia is thanks to my parents, who let her watch it at their house. BC and WP are more from books featuring those characters, but still.

DD does watch carefully chosen and limited commercial free TV when I need a break.

I thought I'd be the mom who avoided commercializing her kid. I'm learning its everywhere. And when DD get presents featuring Disney princesses or tv characters....and she likes them!?

I justify it with the fact that she plays imagination games with these toys/characters and doesn't really know the shows/movies associated with them. For example, she has a Little Nemo book someone gave her that she loves to read, so she knows who Nemo is, but she's never seen the movie and has no idea it existis.

But she loves naming all her fish toys, "Nemo."

DD currently sleeps on Snow White sheets found at a garage sale because someone gave her a Snow White doll and DD remarked how Snow White has black hair and brown eyes "yike me!" and I caved because there are so few "princesses" or dolls that resemble my daughter. But she's never actually seen Snow White, the movie.

I thought I'd be the anti technology mom.

But as DD sees me on the computer (on GCM!) or checking email, DD wants her "puter" too. And DD is very good at using my ipad/iphone. I justify it by saying that DD learned to write some letters by using the Montessori tracing letters apps on my ipad. At two she started writing the letters in her name on paper.

I thought I'd be the natural, only wooden toys mom.

My DD's playroom is full of plastic Duplo blocks, a plastic doll house that was $1 at a garage sale rather than the $50 wooden one I wanted; full of plastic toy food and a plastic kitchen she loves to "cook" on.

I thought I'd be the mom who didn't stress about DD's milestones.

And here I am stressing because at 2.5 she is very anti-potty training to the point that asking her to go on the potty causes tears. So, I've dropped it and decided to let it go for awhile. But I still feel stressed when friends have babies completely potty trained at 2!

So, how about you? Are you the moms you'd thought you'd be?

[Blue Aurora]

In some ways yes and some ways no. When my oldest was around 2 I had a little mini crisis like that. I realized I had slid into things that weren't my ideal and I just made the change back to my original ideas. Now my oldest is 7 and my ideals have changed with them. We are still low tv, technology and certain toys are never allowed in our home but they do have a selection of plastic manipulative toys that weren't allowed when I only had toddlers. I think in some ways you figure out the ideals that are your absolutes and the ones that can flex and grow.

[racheepoo]

No--my life completely changed when I got divorced. I did not expect to have one child, to not be able to pick him up at 2 after school and spend the day together, to have to make decisions about which bill to pay and whether I could swing extracurricular things for him. Many of my ideals (and the hills to die on) changed significantly too. I think this is a good thing, because a lot of them were rooted in judgment and perfectionism.

[marbles]

IMHO I think it's a good sign when ideals change some after actually having children. I'm still very early in this journey and already I've found that things are not so black and white as they seem from the outside. I understand things I just couldn't understand before being a mom. so yes I'm different than I thought I would be. My morals and long-term goals haven't changed, but my more mundane ideals and some of my philosophy has changed and those things will continue to change as my life changes.

[CelticJourney]

I think mothering is like getting married. We have all kinds of ideas of what it will be like, but it's usually always different. Some of the different is not so good, some of it is very, very good. :hug2

[Daria_Aleksandrovna]

My husband would rather agree with your approach than mine (i.e. absolutely no screen time -see I am newbie at parenting thing :) - as he'd say a tiny moderate amount would actually aid imagination rather than total absence of screen time and being stuck with wooden shaped toys only! And he's wary of trying too hard to live up to something based on little research with no obvious effects. We only know it's not great when TV is continuously on in the background.

There are some ideals that need to be black and white, sometimes there are no excuses for gray-spectrum, but TV and commercial Disney stuff isn't that obvious one of them, even I agree...

And you don;t sound like you let things completely go out of control! Which is good!!!!

[Amber]

Before I had kids I had parenting all planned out, and of course I was the perfect parent I head. :haha

Then kids came, and reality hit. I still hold tight to my ideals, but how I enforce those ideals has changed and I realized that some things I held up as ideal really didn't matter.

I will never be the perfect mom :shrug I've given up feeling guilty about that. I do my best and keep striving to be better, but I've given up on ever being perfect.

[Codi]

It's interesting. I don't consider anything you posted to have anything to do with AP. :) Crunchy? Maybe. AP? Nope. You can be perfectly attached and still do everything you've listed. :hug

[MaybeGracie]

I've done most things the way I expected to, but there are quite a few things I've done differently than I planned as well. I'm okay with that. :)

In some situations, I find I'm letting go of ideals that I'm not okay with letting go of, so I make changes to get us back on track. In other situations, I find I'm relaxing and discovering that those particularly "ideals" weren't as important as I once thought, so I accept those changes with peace.

I am definitely an Attachment Parent, but some of the particulars of how that plays out for our family have changed over the years and to adapt to different children. That's okay as long as we're still holding to the underlying tenants of AP. None of the things you listed seem to relate to AP in my mind - crunchy, yes, but not AP.

[Can'tTurnLeft]

The mother I was in my head was not realistic, nor was the mother that my children needed. If I had remained the mother in my head I would not have been able to be who my sweet babies needed to be. Idealism was trumped by reality and I'm so very very grateful :heart

[WildFlower]

I am definitely not the mom I thought I'd be...but it doesn't mean I am disappointed in the mom I have become or am!

I thought my baby would be "on schedule", sleep through the night and would not be allowed TV till age 2. I was NOT going to be AP.:no

Instead my baby made her own schedule by us following her cues after I took her off the one I was "trying" to get her to follow but was never succesful. She has not once slept through the night without waking. I do allow TV, usually educational but not always. I definitely AP now.

I allow her to play with pens (I take out the ink , she insists on carrying the brightly colored pens around and screams if I take them). I like n atural toys too and always thought I would give her toys that did NOT make noise. Her favorite toys make noise or "do" something! :giggle

Mothering changes so many thing, or it can, if you let it. It's part of growing.

[MercyInDisguise]

The mother I was in my head was not realistic, nor was the mother that my children needed. If I had remained the mother in my head I would not have been able to be who my sweet babies needed to be.

This is lovely. :heart The mother I was in my head around the time we got married was a big family, scheduled feeding, CIO, spanking mother who kept a perfectly clean house and cooked all our meals and did everything. I would breastfeed for a while, but the children would be weaned ON their first birthday. STTN by 12 weeks.

That mom was not who C needed, nor was it the wife DH needed. We still want a bigger family (although we aren't planning on spacing them as closely as I expected back then), and we are planning on homeschooling. But C is 19 months, sleeping in our room (frequently in our bed), still up at least 6 times a night, and nurses 1635 times an hour. We nurse on demand (although I do redirect/distract occasionally these days), and we GBD as we are learning how. Our living room generally looks like a 19 month old hurricane blew through it, and although I keep a fairly CLEAN house, it is also fairly cluttered. And DH loves cooking, so I would be taking away from his hobby if I did all that.

In short, our ideals change, and change signifies growth. I also don't see your ideals as having anything to do with AP. :shrug
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