Parenting is full of challenges, and learning to give yourself grace in the grey areas can make the journey more manageable and fulfilling.
I was determined to ace motherhood when I first discovered I was pregnant. Nobody was giving out scores, but if they did, I wanted to get a HD. I read the books, researched online and devoured all the advice parenting experts gave. All I had to do was create an “eat-play-sleep” routine and I’d be on my way to becoming a successful mum.
I had immense confidence in the theory of looking after a baby. After all, I had scientific research to back it up. These were experts who had done years of studies and had plenty of clinical practice. Some even provided before-and-after stories to prove their methods work.
For someone who never had much prior experience with babies, I naively believed I’d be fine. My life before becoming a mum had a fixed formula: If I studied hard, worked hard, put in the effort, I usually had a positive outcome on whatever it was I focused on. It worked for my education, my career and even my hobbies.
Then I became a mum
It didn’t take long for things to unravel and fall apart. I could not get my newborn to eat, play or sleep happily, much less establish any sort of eat-play-sleep routine. My desperation—and sleep deprivation—drove me to read and research more. This time, however, scientific evidence was optional. It simply needed a smidge of credibility.
It’s with much embarrassment that I recall the hours my husband and I would spend trying to decipher my baby’s cry, because I saw a clip about how babies have some sort of language in their cries. I even wrote down the “words” and their meaning to serve as a bilingual dictionary.
The only thing I got out of that exercise was adding my cries to my crude translating document. “Sniff” was “This is too hard” and “Waaaaah” was “Why won’t my baby stop crying?”. At least I understood what I was trying to say when I was crying. Not so much when my child was.
My baby continued to cry at playtime and refused to sleep (or stay asleep) for any prolonged period of time.
It didn’t take long for me to conclude I was a failure. Obviously, I had misread, misinterpreted or failed to properly implement what the experts were teaching. I was doing something wrong, which resulted in me failing at being a mum.
When you’re the outlier
There is a plethora of parenting advice available online for anybody willing to look. There is an abundance of research done on anything vaguely related to raising children. Most of these are presented by an expert of some sort, who has had much success in their field.
What happens when this expert-backed advice doesn’t deliver the expected results? Whose fault is it? The expert, because they’ve failed to take some variable into account? The parent, because they haven’t executed the expert’s advice correctly?
Logic serves to say the parent—the non-experienced one—is obviously the problem. After all, if it’s a solution that has worked for most of the population, it only goes to show the solution isn’t the issue here. It’s the person using the solution.
Except . . . is it?
I explore the concept of whether you are a failure when sound advice doesn’t work, in Mums At The Table’s very first Life in the Grey podcast episode below.
The scientific contradiction
I’d like to suggest when it comes to parenting—and human behaviour—the very best we have done is make educated guesses. If you look carefully (which let’s admit it, which parent has the time to?), even scientific studies with the same objectives can come up with vastly different outcomes.
Take childcare for example. On the one hand, the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health has found early childcare is linked to better emotional and social outcomes for children than for those who are looked after at home. On the other, a study published in the American Educational Research Journal has found that more time spent in childcare will result in children having poorer social skills. (If you are interested in reading more on the topic of how numbers and statistics aren’t as objective as we believe them to be, read The Number Bias by Sanne Blauw.)
Human beings are notoriously unpredictable; why should we expect anything less from research into human behaviour?
Just because something has worked for 99 per cent of the population doesn’t have to mean you’re a failure when it doesn’t work for you. It’s important to recognise the variables, the things that make our lives less black-and-white and more grey: Our personalities, our family of origin, our influences, our perspectives, our environment and crucially, the resources we have access to.
Life in the grey
As my friend Faith mentioned in the podcast, there are some basic general population guidelines we should all adhere to. Our job as parents is to protect our children and give them the necessary skills to lead independent, thriving lives. How we do that, however, can look very different not only because of the grey in our lives but also due to our personal biases.
Parenting in the grey—living life in the grey—means we stop seeing our attempts as “right and wrong” and more “here’s a different one to try”. It gives us space to be compassionate towards ourselves and to show ourselves grace when things don’t quite work out the way we want them to.
This way, we’re not failing or terrible mums when expert-backed advice doesn’t deliver the expected results; it simply doesn’t apply to our specific context.
Parenthood is a journey when we’ll often feel we’re doing it wrong. There will be days when we’ll lose our temper, when the house is a mess and when the best-laid plans fall apart. Instead of seeing these moments as failures, view them as opportunities for growth. Every challenge we face is a chance to learn more about our child, about ourselves and about what works (or doesn’t) for our family.
The experts may know what tends to work for children in general, but only we know the intricacies of our child’s personality, needs and emotions. Giving ourselves grace means allowing space for our own intuition. There will be times when our gut tells us something different than what an expert suggests, and that’s okay.
Looking back, I wish I hadn’t been that afraid to step away from the “rules” and do what felt right for my baby, even if it was unconventional. (Chances are, I’d have found a different expert supporting it anyway—yes, even for co-sleeping.)
Tune in to the Life in the Grey podcast
Life isn’t always black and white. Life in the Grey is a Mums At The Table podcast where we explore the psychological factors that shape our relationships, be that as a parent, a partner or a peer. And don’t worry—it’s short because we ain’t got time for fluff. Expect practical takeaways that you can apply to your own life, whether it’s navigating parenting challenges or finding balance amidst life’s demands. Join us each month as we share stories, insights and reflections that encourage personal growth and foster a sense of connection in our community.
Parenting in the grey: Why it’s okay when expert advice don’t work
