“I don’t recognize you.” This was the first thought I had when my daughter was born. She didn’t look like me (at first), and I soon learned that she didn’t act like me, either.
I was a quiet and content baby, or so I’d been told; my daughter was anything but. On our first night home, she cried for hours while my husband and I tried everything we could to calm her, from rocking to singing to feeding to changing her. Eventually she did soothe, but my daughter was letting us know, loudly and clearly, that she was her own person. We had to set aside our expectations for who we thought she would be to see who she actually was and would become.
Although we were too exhausted to think about it at the time, our daughter’s cries were helping us get to know her. The way we responded also helped her get to know us.
[For more on this story by SHAUNA TOMINEY, go to https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/five_ways_to_talk_with_your_kids_so_they_feel_loved?]
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