The arrival of one or even more gorgeous, tiny, and vulnerable humans can startle first-time parents like me by making us feel capable and delighted one minute and small and defenseless the next. It is common to see joy, unparalleled affection, and optimism interact with exhaustion, anxiety, and self-doubt.
But being a first-time mom and dad should be an easy task, and that is why I have listed tips that may help you in being the best version as a parent.
Table of Contents
Advice for New Parents
Trust Yourself
I start to notice one thing once you become a parent. Everywhere you look, there are parenting gurus, and everyone wants to weigh in. But what is appropriate for one family could be very inappropriate for another. The advantage is that as a parent, we get to set the example. Our expertise is our knowledge of our needs, child, and family.
On every subject, there will still be contradicting knowledge! The greatest we can do is listen to and educate ourselves on both sides before making the right decision for our household and hearts. The most formidable challenge of parenting is avoiding feeling guilty or needing to defend any of your choices.
Be Kind to Yourself
My “me” time vanishes from my calendar when I become a parent. My new best buddy will always need my undivided attention. Fortunately, there is a method to incorporate the two. Upon doing my household duties, I protect my child close by wearing a baby carrier or taking the child with me to the park so I can enjoy some alone time.
Selfishness does not mean concentrating on our needs, and it’s essential to being an effective parent. Everyone won’t remember a tidy home or loads of clothes that are done, but you will recall the enjoyable moments shared, so embrace the chaos and disarray.
Get as Much Sleep as Possible
When a newborn enters our home, our sleeping patterns will change instantly. Not just infants become irritable when they don’t get enough rest. Also, we are parents. Although it may be difficult to imagine, newborns can sleep better, and up to 20 hours of sleep each day are possible for newborns.
But they rarely get more than four hours of uninterrupted sleep. When you have the chance, sleep when you want to. It’s preferable to take a quick nap while your baby is asleep throughout the day than to get no sleep.
Accept All the Help You Can Get as A New Parent
Without a supportive companion, what good is a superhero? Our friends and family want to support us, and it might be challenging for them to know if we need help if we don’t speak to them. We must always talk and seek support when we need it.
Additionally, we can always speak with a specialist if we have concerns about our health or our child’s physical or mental health.
Be Flexible as You Get Used to Being a New Parent
Either formula or breastfeeding. Crib sleeping or sharing a bed. Baby-led weaning or purees. It’s simple to believe that your parenting style must be unwavering. We are told that many options are available and that once a plan has been chosen, it is best to adhere to it steadfastly.
You can give your infant a bottle once daily rather than trying to function through your weariness. At first, it could seem frightening, as if you’ve lost your faith or soiled your reputation as a breastfeeding mother, but sometimes giving your baby a bottle doesn’t imply you’re no longer a breastfeeding mother. You’re just a breastfeeding mother who has discovered your gray region, that’s all.
You’ll be a great mother and a great parent if you can be adaptable in your strategy to maintain your mental and physical wellness.
Don’t Lose Your Sense of Humor When You Become a First-time Parent
Contrary to popular belief, anyone can make comedy work for them and their kids; you don’t need to be a comedian or prankster. Humour can serve as a diversion for parents, a change of pace from the stressful aspect of parenting, or both.
Contrarily, comedy can be a parent’s most excellent helpful instrument for defusing tense circumstances, promoting appropriate behavior, and strengthening the parent-child relationship. However, parents lack good humor and don’t completely understand how it might ease or lessen tension.
With infants, humor works well as a component of happiness and social interaction. Using humor in your household can be a discreet but effective way to deal with your kids’ bothersome behaviors or slip-ups.
Take Care of Each Other. And Do Some Fun Stuff!
Parenting on an equal basis is essential. The early toddler stage is more straightforward for parents like us who share parenting responsibilities. In addition to building partner relationships and fostering links with children, equal parenthood favors family ties. It is also essential that you as couples have fun being parents.
Live Life
The first few days of my first child’s life seemed to fly by since I had him, but at the same time, every day seemed to drag by at a slower rate. I occasionally lost sight of the present because I was preoccupied with concerns about feeding, breastfeeding supply, growth milestones, getting good photos, and handling infant gas.
As a new parent, I wish someone had advised me that although all of those aspects are essential, it is more meaningful to be there and cherish your child’s early years as they develop quickly throughout the first six months. You’ve heard it before, but it bears repeating: you only have one chance to enjoy your infant as a baby; these times are gone forever.
What are the Four Types of Parenting Styles?
The four primary parenting philosophies adopted in child psychology today are authoritarian, authoritative, permissive, and uninvolved/neglectful, based on the study of Stanford academics Eleanor Maccoby and John Martin and developmental psychologist Diana Baumrind.
Every parenting approach affects children’s behavior differently. It can be recognized by specific traits and the level of sensitivity of how warm and receptive families are to their child’s welfare and demandingness.
Authoritarian
Parenting in an authoritarian manner is relatively rigid. With minimal reactivity, it holds youngsters to great expectations. An authoritative parent prioritizes compliance, power, and discipline over nurturing their child. When criticism does come, it’s frequently unfavorable, and errors are commonly met with heavy punishment.
Physical punishment and screaming are also frequent. Authoritarian parents ignore their children’s accomplishments while punishing them for failings. They anticipate that the child will follow them and behave well, and they tend to raise kids who are capable of following regulations.
Typical characteristics:
- Great expectations and poor responses
- Impose tight restrictions without much regard for the demands of their child’s social, mental, or behavioral issues.
- Often responds “because I said so” whenever the child asks why a rule or penalty is in place.
- The majority of conversation is from a parent to a child.
To maintain total control, authoritarian parents frequently speak to their youngsters without seeking input or criticism. This strict parenting approach uses complex discipline, often called “tough love.”
Authoritative
In this parenting approach, parents are caring, receptive, and supportive but also establish strict boundaries for their kids. They try to discipline kids by outlining rules, having discussions, and using logic. They consider a child’s perspective but do not often agree with it.
Kids raised in this manner are typically outgoing, enthusiastic, happy, independent, self-reliant, self-controlled, interested, friendly, and goal-oriented.
Typical characteristics:
- Great demand and high response
- Establishes clear guidelines and expectations for their children while demonstrating flexibility and comprehension
- Interacts often; hears and considers the ideas, emotions, and views of their kids
- Allows proper repercussions to happen, such as a child failing a test because they failed to study, yet takes use of the chance to have them think and grow
Parents in charge are caring, helpful, and frequently aware of their kids’ interests. They mentor their kids by having frank conversations about morals and logic. Children with strong parental role models are often disciplined and capable of independent thought.
Permissive
Parents using this parenting approach are loving but loose. They fail to set clear boundaries, keep a careful eye on their kids’ behaviors, or demand that their kids behave appropriately for their age.
These parenting practices often result in impulsive, restless, irresponsible, dominating, violent, low self-reliance, self-control, and accomplishment in their offspring.
Typical characteristics:
- High response and low exigence
- Readily share information and frequently defers their children’s decisions instead of dictating what to do.
- Rules and standards are either not established or infrequently upheld.
- Usually, they take considerable measures to please their children, often at their sacrifice.
With their children, permissive parents are more inclined to adopt a companionship role than a parental one. They stay out of arguments and frequently give in to their kids’ requests at the first indication of trouble. These families let their youngsters do whatever they want and sometimes offer advice or guidance.
Uninvolved/neglectful
Parents that adopt this parenting approach are inattentive, unreachable, and unwelcoming. Children who experience this kind of parenting often lack pride and self-worth and look to other, often improper, role models to take the place of the negligent parent.
Typical characteristics:
- Low demand and low responsiveness
- Essentially, they leave their children to care for themselves because they are unconcerned with their necessities or occupied/overwhelmed with other matters.
- Minimal care, instruction, and nurturing are provided.
- Often suffers from their concerns with self-worth and find it challenging to establish deep relationships.
This approach, often known as detached parenting, is characterized by a general disinterest. Negligent parents spend little time with their kids and don’t enforce regulations very often. They may also be perceived as cold and heartless, but this is not always the case because they frequently deal with their problems.
Which type of parenting works best for you?
According to studies, assertive parents tend to bring up autonomous, self-sufficient, and socially adept children. Kids of tight authoritarian, permissive, or uninvolved families are more likely to exhibit these characteristics, even if kids of authoritative parents are not exempt from mental health problems, interpersonal problems, substance misuse, poor self-regulation, or low self-esteem.
You don’t have to adhere to just one form of parenting because there may be moments when you must adopt various parenting approaches — but in balance. Of course, there is no “one size fits all” whenever it comes to parenting.
The most effective parents know when to adapt their approach based on the circumstance. If a child is sick, an authoritative parent might wish to loosen some of their control while still providing warmth.
What Do First-Time Parents Struggle with the Most?
It was a genuinely exciting experience becoming a parent. The majority, though not all, new parents frequently describe the experience as gratifying, ecstatic adoration, and pure delight from pregnancy to first-time parenthood, and this was everything I felt.
This priceless event also delivers a range of feelings towards me. To be a new parent is rewarding, but there are many challenges and roadblocks to overcome.
What challenges did I face as a new parent? As a new parent, it was not easy in my early days, hours, months, or years. It is comparable to venturing into unexplored terrain. Nearly everything comes with hurdles and is new. Fatigue, a lifestyle shift, health status, and even relationship troubles are a few of these frequent difficulties we can experience.
No Time for “us”
After a few months of becoming a parent to my baby, I noticed that I always missed my partner, who is forever my best friend. Like every new parent I have talked to, it was a different feeling whenever you have a newborn. Even though my partner is beside me, it still feels like they are far away from us.
It’s challenging to keep your relationship as a spouse strong when both parents are preoccupied with the infant. Exchanges that once occurred naturally now take effort. Springboard Carolyn Pirak, head of the Seattle-based program Bringing Baby Home, says the secret to a successful marriage after having a child is to look for opportunities to connect. You must be observant of each other’s life.
According to research, married couples who support their relationships tend to have happier marriages. It demonstrates that you still think about each other regardless of the newborn’s constant demands that you attempt to remain aware of the mundane aspects of your partner’s life.
Sleep Deprivation
One of the most significant difficulties brand-new parents encounter is sleep deprivation. Parents who are overworked and restless have little patience for each other. You ought to have a strategy that recognizes that you’re all in this together and provides you with the necessary rest.
Recognize that hard times can require bold measures — if poor sleep pushes you to the bone-weary state, take into account occasional shifts in a comfier part of the home or even bunk in at a mom’s or friend’s house for a night. It might involve taking turns allowing each other to sleep late on weekends or spelling each other off for grown-up nap time.
No Sex
Discovering ways to show intimacy beyond the bedroom is essential for overcoming the post-baby lull. Schedule plenty of time for snuggling and tender caressing, and discuss your thoughts regarding the lack of sexual intimacy. Although sex will take a backseat in the months after the child’s arrival, the two of you must put a little effort into making sex a piece of your lifestyle once more.
Sometimes, just confessing that something has shifted may be sufficient to acknowledge the significance of sex — and feel confident that you will get a few of the sizzle back. Do it; don’t wait for the ideal time.
Clashing Parenting Styles
Understand that disagreements about parenting are inevitable; you and your partner probably won’t agree on everything. Now is the time to act like an adult, so you must discuss, accept, and negotiate. If your spouse suggests regular feedings for three days, perhaps you’ll agree to give it a shot; if it doesn’t end up working, he’ll be supportive of returning to your more relaxed approach.
Parents who freely communicate their parenting philosophies are more likely to be capable of resolving the dispute. Cope with disagreements before they develop and escalate into resentment and fury. If you and your partner cannot reach a compromise and are both unhappy, think about consulting a professional counselor or a friend whose parenting you respect for advice.
You might discover future agreement with the aid of a parenting course taught by a credible expert or even a book that you both agree is reasonable.
So Much To-Do
For parents, having a new baby means a new list of tasks. Conflicts over the allocation of responsibilities can cause marital unhappiness, especially for women who feel their partners aren’t doing their fair share.
Mom and dad, who are most likely to stay delighted in the post-baby period, gain knowledge and efficient conflict resolution abilities to negotiate their way through anything from who changes the wet diapers to who helps make career sacrifices.
Two-career couples who want to share the household burden frequently have conflicting anticipations when one parent is on vacation. Parents should make an effort to “complain without blaming.”
That entails being capable of requesting additional laundry assistance without hurling a litany of complaints about unattended stains and dirty dishes. Moms are happier when men shoulder their fair share of home duties. Moms who value their husbands’ frequently more lighthearted parenting style and see it as a valuable contribution are much more prone to have happy relationships.
Working together as a team entails arranging a division of labor that is agreeable to both of you, with both parents taking the lead. It does not mean to absolve dad of responsibility. Sort out roles, objectives, and duties; do not maintain a running tally of who is responsible for what.
Final Thought First Time Mom and Dad
The first time you know you will be a parent is one of the best times we can have. However, when our babies arrive, there can be several challenges that we won’t expect. One remarkably, the incredibly long day seems to have been the first month. Although it’s difficult in months two and three, things get better monthly.
Contrary to popular belief, breastfeeding is more complicated than you may imagine. However, it does get simpler after the first few months. The most challenging but most rewarding job there is being a parent.