By: Gleb Reys
It's been a month and a few days since we were blessed by the birth of our little girl, and while 30 something days may not seem like much, our daughter has already taught us few lessons in parenting. I strongly believe these are the most valuable lessons we could get, as there's nothing better than the experience you gain by actually doing something yourself and not reading about it in a book or taking someone's advice.
Motivation is always good. You can't have too much of it, and you can never get enough of it neither. It's one of the wonderful feelings which move you forward and make you do all them crazy things you're smiling when you look back at. For some, motivation is just a set of reasons why certain needs have to be done sooner or later. For others, motivation is about being curious and adventurous in our everyday life. It's a constant challenge.
So what kind of motivation would you find in parenting? What I was really surprised to find out, is that you have limitless motivational opportunities! Obviously, they vary a lot for mothers and fathers, especially in the first few month of having a baby. After all, I was back to work after just 2 weeks, and my wife is still spending days at home with our daughter and she will do so for the first 4 months or so. So our motivational opportunities are different. But there is no doubt about both of us have enough reasons to be and stay motivated.
The thing I particularly liked about our daughter is that in practically all of them situations we've had so far, she simplifies them for us and leaves us no choice but to succeed. She gives us plain raw motivation and expect nothing less than the most successfull solution to any concern she might had. She doesn't think too much yet, she only reacts.
For instance, if she feels like crying - she cries. She doesn't know why she felt like this at a particular moment, and she doesn't really care. She just starts crying, and she expects one of us to pay her immediate attention and figure the rest out for ourselves. She gives us a situation and states our goal - find whatever might be wrong with her, and make her happy.
The first few times when she cried were awful - we didn't know what to do. She's been very quiet for the very first few days, and then suddenly she got much more active and sometimes she'd cry for a good few minutes and we tried everything we could to make her stop.
And that's the best motivation you can get out of parenting: your child knows you and expects you to succeed. Nobody else can help, you are the only person able to resolve such problems. And when you stand there above your crying child, practically terrified, there is a moment when you come to realise - there is no room for a failure in this situation. Your child is crying already, so no matter what you do, it will be an improvement. So you do the first thing that comes to your mind. If it helps, both yourself and your baby are happy. If it doesn't, you make yourself think of the next thing you may try. And so you do, and again there's a high chance it will help. After few occasions, you learn to quickly sport the exact reason of your baby being unhappy, and you fix it without being so agitated. It may break your heart hearing your child cry as you're desperately trying one thing after another, but trust me - it's all worth the result. Because every single time you see a smiling baby of yours, you gain both confidence and motivation.
What you have with your baby are inescapable success opportunities. Our daughter believes in us so strongly that we simply have no other way but to do our best. And to our surprise, this is just about enough to make her happy most of the times! ;) What also helps is that most of the things at such an early age are natural - so when our baby is crying, this could only mean few simple things like whether she's hungry or not. And surely there are very simple ways of finding it out :)
Finding motivation in parenting may sound like a tedious task. But it really isn't! Your don't have to search for the motivation. It's already there. All you have to do is to try things out and see what the result is. I obviously didn't cover everything in this short entry, but I'll talk about motivation in parenting later. But just to give you the idea, here are few more examples of such motivation.
From the early days, you get to realise that this new life you've brought into this world is now fully dependant on you. Not only you are to provide food and comfort for the baby, but you should also think of the physical and mental development. This is when you read books and play with your baby. You see your baby grow and react better to sounds or movements. You're happy to see with your own eyes how your baby recognizes you, sometimes even by the sound of your steps. You're spending time doing some simple physical exercises to ensure the proper and timely development of your child's body. And all these activities are both challenging and motivational for you.
Even the simplest things about your baby will motivate you. For instance, I felt envious when I noticed one evening that our little girl had learned to smile consciously, but would only smile to her mother. They had spent so much time together (figures!), that the connection between them grew much stronger. I clearly didn't spend as much time with our little girl, but seeing her smile so easily to my wife, I couldn't resist to drop everything else and literally spend hours every evening for the next few days just holding our daughter, talking to her and comforting her in any way I could. I can't express how happy I was when she finally smiled at me! I had tears in my eyes, because her smile touched me heart so deeply.
I hope I have convinced you today: finding motivation in parenting isn't a task, but a source of positiveness. It motivates you and boosts your confidence, and it's easily one of the best ways to have fun while taking care of your baby.
