the 2nd newsletter, July 2006

Love is never...premature

 
He is tiny, extremely tiny. So tiny that picking him up in your arms, nursing him, looking after him is a reason for immense tenderness and unconfessable fears. The fear of hurting him. The fear of not being up to bringing up a child who is so "different" from the others. The fear of not knowing him to love him with the love he needs. Comprehensible, but unfounded worries. A premature child is not "different" from the others, neither can he be considered as an isolated case. In Italy there are a large number of babies born before the 37° week of pregnancy or born underweight.

 
The return home with your baby is lived, and rightly so, as the achievement of the most important desire, as the end of the separation, as the true beginning of the experience of maternity and paternity. It is not necessary however to be surprised by the psychological difficulties that the return home can involve. Not by chance it is often remembered that a premature child corresponds, without any guilt, to "premature" parents. The feeling of "not being prepared" that the mother and father live during such a sudden birth is often destined to mark the first months of life with the baby. As, especially in the mother, there is often a strong disappointment of not having been able to live the birth as she had imagined and hoped. They are common emotions to be dealt with and not denied, that must be shared with the partner, that must be compared with other parents of premature children, that must be entrusted, in the case they are too difficult to manage, to an expert who can help the parents to analyse and put them into proportion.

 
The effort to make means taking a distance from what happened and concentrating on what now has to happen.
The return home with the baby finally opens the road to the construction of the relationship that the hospital has limited. The physical contact is particularly important in this phase. The fear, very common, of hurting a newborn baby "so small and fragile", has therefore to leave space for the need for cuddles and intimacy. It is necessary not to forget that a premature child cannot be considered premature forever. It is comprehensible that the parents of a premature child are more anxious than those of a normal child, but this anxiety cannot "mark" the child's development. Like all others the child will have to gain experience, to crawl around the room, to take his first steps. Like all the others he will have to be free to "make mistakes" to be able to learn, to fall out of the carpet, to fall on the ground. So he can try, immediately after, to get up again. And like all other children he will need serene parents, capable of cultivating, despite the difficulties, the seed of hope. It doesn't take much to win the challenge. All it takes is to trust one's own strengths. All it takes is to follow one's own instinct and one's own heart. All it takes is to understand that the birth and the future of a baby are, in any case, a "miracle" of love.

Mothers, without feelings of guilt

 
Marvellous, but tiring. This can describe the first few months with a baby. They give extraordinary emotions but they also put you in front of a fatigue and "dependence" you never experimented before. It is difficult to reinvent the role of the mother without taking into consideration the need to limit personal requirements needs and desires. It is difficult not to feel conflicting feelings now that the situation appears with great clarity.

 
The secular rhetoric vision of maternity, absolute beauty, often leaves young mothers in total loneliness with an unconfessable sense of guilt: "Perhaps I don't love him enough", they come to think, some when faced with the increasing desire to regain space, moments of freedom, of solitude or shared friendship. It is a good idea, therefore, to eliminate all these misunderstandings. It is natural to worry about one's baby and his needs, as it is natural to feel the need to get a grip back on one's own life. Maternal instinct, is not a mechanism capable of cancelling the fatigue of maternity nor repressing desires and needs. To understand and to accept this is essential and rightful. Negation, self-censorship are the worst answers to a legitimate desire, that find reason in the need to assure a happy and positive presence for the child.

 
There is the need to rest, for time to think about oneself. You cannot add to an obvious tiredness the weight of an avoidable, because justified renouncement with inopportune feelings of guilt. Leave the child for a while with your partner, a grandmother, a friend. You can do it. You can give yourself, without taking anything away from the baby, two hours to rest, to go to the hairdresser, to take a walk. The secret consists in organizing your day exploiting your time to the best. Adjust as far as possible your life to that of your baby, for instance when he sleeps try to rest too to regain serenity and well-being. The difficulty of looking after a child is a common and diffused element, what makes a difference is how you face the situation.

 
Review your expectations again, share your feelings with your partner, your desire to find time and space for just you two. Discuss with him your needs and this will help you to reorganize your daily routine. A walk, a few hours gymnastics, a bit of shopping, a chat with a friend, a trip to the bookstore, a dive in the swimming pool. Not much is needed to regain equilibrium, a new dimension in which to allow the mother and the woman in you regain the energy and the serenity which you need. And which your child needs.


Taking children to a restaurant

 
Children and restaurants. The binomial is difficult but not impossible. The scenes one assists would certainly put even the strongest in difficulty: refused dishes, desperate running among the tables, endless whims. The picture is not one of the most inviting but, let's be honest, the idea of spending an evening out with friends is a temptation that sometimes is just too much. And, all said and done, there is no reason not to go. What is really needed to win the challenge is only farsighted organization, a strategy to put into practice when needed and naturally...a lot, and we mean a lot of patience.

 
A child will take every chance he gets to put his parent's "resistance" to the test and to affirm his own personality. But they are some who are "more behaved" than others. Public places have particular "charm" for children, because they soon learn that their mother and father find it more difficult to manage their whims in public and they are prepared, to avoid embarrassing situations, to surrender to the child's requests. To transform a nice evening with friends into a total nightmare there is also the matter of the child's needs, comprehensibly different from those of an adult: the good food and conversation are definitely not a reason for pleasure for small children. It is up to the parents, therefore, to learn to reconcile their legitimate need to see their friends, even for a couple of hours, with the plausible needs of a child to live his age without impossible limitations.

 
The first step to take is to organize the trip out in good time and sensibly. If you have the chance to choose the place where you eat, go for a less formal place which has fast service: however hard he tries, a child cannot maintain faultless behavior for hours on end. Better therefore to go for a fast pizza, with ice cream and a walk to follow, rather than an actual dinner. Involve your partner in a preventive "antistress" strategy. To enjoy some evenings with friends you can decide together for instance to take it in turns: "the first half-hour I'll deal with the child and you can chat, then we can exchange", or "this evening we are with your friends so I will deal with the children, next Saturday we are with my friends so you take care of them".

 
Prevention and strategy are also the best weapons for what concerns the handling of the child. Avoid for instance making the child wear, for a dinner out, his most expensive clothes or the ones you like best: you will avoid an evening of sacrifice in the vain attempt not to get dirty and avoid yourself the anxiety of checking him continuously to make sure he doesn't get dirty. Abandon also the idea of forcing the child to experiment new dishes: it is no good pretending that he must eat the dish of the day if he doesn't like it. It is better to resort to the dish he likes to prolong the tranquillity. Don't forget also that children like to feel grown up. Avoid therefore giving him his meal from your dish: a dish just for him will make him feel grown up and he will probably succeed for a while in loosing his desire "to go wild".

 
But a child remains a child and when the moment of being "grown up" passes, he will go back to wanting to play with everything and with everybody. The main point is, then, not to be caught out unprepared. Take coloured pencils and toys to be brought out when necessary and, if you have forgotten to bring them with you, use your imagination: a bread crust is enough to start a story about dishes and spoons. With discretion, however: you obviously don't want the table games to turn into a battleground. Children have in any case to learn the rules of social cohabitation. And, among these, there is also the need to learn how to sit at the table. Keeping in mind, nevertheless, that in order for rules to be effective, the child must be able to obey them : to ask a child to remain sat at the table through a long lunch with adults intent in their conversation means heading for an inevitable failure. It is better to try to compromise, to organise things before the eve ning starts. If the place has a park for instance, you can bargain with the child on the possibility to go and play when he has eaten as long as he is well behaved at the table: "let's go to play for a while after you have eaten your pasta". The agreement must be respected, even if you would rather remain at the table talking. And remember, before you leave the table, to excuse yourself with those present. A good example is worth more than a thousand words.

 

Family is...collaboration

 
Laying the table, washing the dishes, tidying the room... to share our the management of family life means helping children to accomplish autonomy and a sense of responsibility. It means offering a chance to children to realise their own duties, other people's needs, the need to share and collaborate. It is, therefore, an educational process and, as like all educational processes, it requires time and patience.

 
What is necessary is not to give in to the temptation to give up too soon on the collaboration of children when faced with the hard work it takes to get them involved or because the results are disappointing. It is necessary to insist and, above all, to organize everything well. When dealing with children requests and demands must be clear and precise. The sharing of duties in the home should slowly become a habit and a commitment which eventually becomes natural. Looking after their own room, is, for instance, the first step: a child at school age is absolutely capable of tidying his own desk, of tidying up his toys, of putting away shirts and shorts in a drawer. And if his "tidied" room does not look very different from when you left it, don't give up and, above all don't give in to the comprehensible desire to tidy everything in a hurry, and do things for him. Follow him, while he does things reminding him what to do, but let him do it.

 
The daily appointments at the table are a further occasion for collaboration: asking the child to lay the table can become soon a habit. As washing the dishes with his mother or to watering the plants on the balcony. Pay attention however that the duties you give him are adequate for his age and, above all, that they change from time to time. "You lay the table and mummy will wash up", it is an absolute attribution of roles that on one hand authorizes the child to retain that his obligations are completed with one job, on the hand it defines a unique and repetitive position. To avoid that idleness takes the upper hand it is better to change the jobs and objective every now and again: one week he will make his bed, one week he will help to lay the table, one week will be dry the dishes. It is useful to weekly share the jobs: Sunday morning can for instance be a time to tidy the house all together before going out: mother can clean the floors, father can clea n the windows, the children can make the beds. It is clear that the rules must not be broken, unless there are exceptional cases. Especially by those who establish them.

 
It is also self-defeating to fall in the trap, still rather frequent, of creating distinctions between males and females. One must explain to children that all members of a family have the same rights and the same duties and that both little boys and little girls have to help with domestic chores. The objective is to make them understand that only if everyone helps, things work out well: Mother, father, grandparents, a little brother: all those you love can need your help. It is not difficult to understand, even for a child. Provided that naturally the words are accompanied by practical examples: the break of a toy, can be for instance a good chance. Mother, father or a grandfather particularly skilled with tools all gather around the battered toy, looking together for a solution. Even if a solutions is not found, the child will remember the strong feeling of sharing his pain about what happened and having found understanding and help. To feel useful, to be able to count on others, to recognize oneself as part of the family makes a child grow and become more responsible and more open to understanding the value of sacrifice and renouncement, whether his own or that of others.
It means, above all, facing the experiences that life will bring with more self-assurance.