It happened during a family idyll in paradise: Linda Morgan’s 10-year-old son, Todd, got a nasty blister on his ankle. Trying to relax and enjoy a much-needed vacation in Hawaii, Morgan — who is ParentMap’s longtime education editor and the author of the parenting book Beyond Smart — played it cool. 
“I moved his complaints to the recesses of my mind, which was working hard to tune out distractions and tune in mai tais and paperback novels,” Morgan says. “After all, for years I'd taken heat from my family for being too protective, too over-the-top and simply too-too.”
Then one morning, Todd appeared at breakfast, his face down, practically pressed into his papaya. His head hurt. He had a fever. But Morgan still resisted what she calls her own “usual on-target, hypervigilant instincts.”
Finally, her husband ran the boy to the hotel doctor; by this time, red streaks were flaming up his leg. “Yep, he had a raging skin infection!” Morgan says — and adds that, to this day, her son never lets her forget it.
Not that she could. The incident sticks in Morgan’s memory, partly because it strengthened her resolve to be her own kind of mother: “What did I learn? That I should have gone with my usual mega-magnified instincts. They had always served me well.”
Too much noise
More and more, moms are subjected to a barrage of opinions, info, research and criticism about how they perform that most desperately important and stressful job of raising kids. From news reports (“Television will hurt your child’s brain!”) to parenting magazines (yes, I get the irony!) to the ever-buzzing blogosphere, every mommy move is fair game for the crosshairs of public (and by that I mean “other mothers’”) opinion.
And increasingly, moms are inviting the info in. A quick search on Amazon.com for “parenting books” turns up more than 30,000 results — including 94 new titles set for release in 2011 (now available for pre-order!). There were more than 1,000 new parenting books released in 2010 (I got tired of counting).
And mom blogs are growing by leaps and bounds. It’s a squirrelly group to get a handle on (many mom bloggers are now somewhat offended by the term and don’t define themselves as such), but the research firm The Nielsen Company now monitors 15,000 “mom blogs” and dozens of mom-blog networks. The website Mom Bloggers Club claims to have more than 10,000 mom-blog links. So we’re talking about a whole lot of talking about the “right” way to do the mind-blowing, soul-shaking, self-obfuscating and profoundly challenging job of raising kids.
With all that nonstop input, it’s small wonder that the persistent, quiet inner voice of innate, instinctive motherhood gets smothered. As Seattle pediatrician and über mom blogger Wendy Sue Swanson says, “It’s so hard to figure out how to trust ourselves with all the chatter — from your mother-in-law to your neighbor to the Internet.
“You want to do it so well and so right — I couldn’t imagine not questioning yourself from time to time.”
“It’s a fire hose of overflow of information,” agrees Bellevue mother Deb Grover. “You don’t know what to grasp onto. You have to block out the noise of that.”
How can you do that? “I take in the information that’s out there and say, ‘These are just possibilities for ways of parenting,’” says Kathleen Kapla, the Seattle mother of a 6-month-old boy. “But ultimately, I have to really listen to myself and listen to this child. He’s not drawn from a book, but from us, and how we are.
“But it’s been hard. Especially when I was a brand-new mom, I definitely had that sense of ‘Wow, I’m not good at this!’ It’s taken a couple of months to start to feel like I do know what’s best for him. If I need help, I ask for it, but mostly, I just take a deep breath and listen to what he’s trying to tell me.”
An ‘A’ in mothering
It’s not just an overload of information that’s squashing those tender green inner instincts. Grover, who with her husband is raising two girls, ages 4 and 5, says stress can come from other parents, too — even well-meaning ones. “I see a lot of pressure from other parents to do certain things,” she says, “get the kids into programs, feed them certain foods, don’t let them watch certain shows. That’s all fine; every family has a different tolerance for those things. But I have had to learn to block out that noise and not fall into those pressures.”
“It’s like a test!” agrees Ada Calhoun, author of the new book Instinctive Parenting and the founding editor-in-chief of Babble.com. “I fall prey to it. I really liked getting A’s in school. It’s tempting, when you’re good at that kind of succeeding, to try to do that throughout your life. ‘Best mother in the world’ — like you’re going to get an ‘A’ in mothering! But there’s no such thing.”
For many moms, there’s a definite retail effect behind all this pressure, too, as they cave to marketing to provide the absolute latest and greatest kid gear and garb. It’s a kind of “consumption as overcompensation,” perhaps resulting from a lack of belief in one’s own innate ability to raise really excellent kids — without bells and whistles.
Even stocking up on the basics can leave a new mom feeling overcome and defeated. “When our daughter was born, my husband and I went into Babies R Us,” Grover says. “We were looking for bottle nipples, and there was a wall there that probably had 500 different brands and types. It was so incredibly overwhelming!
“You see all these choices; how do you know what to do?”
Start by relaxing, writes Calhoun in Instinctive Parenting, and try to keep things in perspective; not every decision you agonize over right now will make a difference in the long run. “Depending on how we raise them, the kids may be a little more or less prepared for certain things, more or less neurotic, but regardless of whether we go with the Maclaren or the Chicco, our children will be the same people they were going to be anyway.”
Trust — within reason
So, how can you be sure of your own instincts? “This is the premise of everything I do!” says Dr. Wendy Sue Swanson, Seattle pediatrician and the author of the popular mom blog Seattle Mama Doc. “I hear from patients, ‘Am I supposed to be feeding fruits before veggies?’ and there’s this look of terror as they await biblical instruction of how to do this right. But there are so few ‘rights’ and so few doctrines or rules when it comes to parenting.”
Swanson cites two of those “rights” — the careful and correct use of car seats, and putting babies to sleep on their backs — but says that almost all of the rest of it — from nutrition to sleep to discipline — is open for parents’ own interpretation.
“I think the hum [of information] makes us all crazy, because it is framing things with margins. The vast majority of children are normal, and the swath of normal is wide.”
That ever-present hum of information has left a lot of parents twisting in the wind, Swanson says, thinking they have to take it all in, sort fact from fiction — even without the help of their pediatrician. “It’s gotten too complicated,” she says. “We’re not even allowing those people who have been trained to help us, help us.”
How your pediatrician can help, Swanson says, is by providing the critical link to research and data that you need to keep your baby safe within the framework of your own instincts. “You might have the instinct that your baby wants to sleep on his tummy,” Swanson says, but that doesn’t mean you should do it.
“We’re never going to be perfect parents, and the whole process of parenting is that you learn as you go,” Swanson says. “We all make mistakes. Trusting our instincts is going to lead us down perfect, beautiful paths and it’s going to lead us down dangerous paths as well, but the instincts are there.”
Swanson suggests moms say ‘no’ to the endless chatter, which serves to distract or dampen those deeply held mommy instincts. Instead, moms should find a few voices that really resonate with their own parenting style — and make sure those resources have credibility and the proper credentials.
“Anyone and everyone has an amplifier now,” Swanson says. “If they are together and articulate, they can look like an expert. I think we are confusing experience with expertise.”
The mother within
For a brand-new mom — who is still negotiating sore nipples and night feedings — “Listen to your instincts” can sound like an impossible, even cruel, assignment. “Just tell me what to do!” she might cry in her overwhelmed state, and who could blame her? But one local parent educator insists the simplest path to happy motherhood is truly innate.
“We were born to take care of our children; it’s part of our DNA,” says Yaffa Maritz, and she should know. For the past decade, Maritz has had a front-row seat for the wild, exhausted, exuberant and messy show that is Seattle-area motherhood. Maritz’s support groups for new moms and their babies, Listening Mothers, have schooled hundreds of dazed moms in the fine and crucial art of, well, listening to their inner mother.
“The problem is that in our busy lives today, we don’t really make time to get to know the mother within,” says Maritz. “The mother within is a wise woman. We all carry with us generations and generations of instinctive mothering.”
So how do you draw out this inner, most excellent mother? Maritz suggests you start by finding a little peace and quiet, however you prefer it, whether by meditation, yoga, journaling, going for a walk, deep breathing or simply lying in the grass. Take some time on a regular basis to stay in touch with your own inner beliefs and goals. What do you want for this child? What feels really right to you? Can you let your baby cry himself to sleep, for example, or is that feeling wrong for a reason? Is cosleeping a better fit for your own particular brand of mothering? Do you really have to wear that baby everywhere — even if you really, truly do not like to?
Looking within sounds simple — even pleasurable — but Maritz points out it’s a dying art. “Even when we breastfeed, we catch up on our Blackberries,” she says, and there’s still more evidence of that persistent, permeating “hum.”
Put that device away for a while, and reflect, Maritz says, and remember that you are part of a natural process — that you do carry inside all that you need to be a good mother and help your child have a healthy, happy life.
“I think it’s so amazing that regardless of what I do, this baby is going to grow and turn into a person,” says Deb Grover, a graduate of Listening Mothers who now works with Maritz on the website Community of Mindful Parents. “I have a certain influence, sure, but it’s such a natural process, it’s really beyond me.
“It’s my job to be my daughters’ support system in this process, but at some point I have to trust that my children are going to be OK. I have confidence in that.”
“I think everyone has the instinct to do a totally good job,” agrees Calhoun, “and that job is not to win an award. That job is to raise this baby up to be a person who can take care of themselves and contribute to society. Pretty much everyone is completely capable of that.”
And, while you’re at it, check your own acceptance of other mothers’ instincts and choices. Says Swanson: “There is so much advice, and really, we don’t need a lot of advice. We need camaraderie.”
Kristen Russell is ParentMap’s managing editor. She instinctively knows that children are far more competent than they appear, especially when it comes to housework.
LISTEN, MOMS
Yaffa Maritz starts every session of Listening Mothers by reading this quote from Loving Every Child by Janusz Korczak, published in 1930.
“I want everyone to understand that no book and no doctor is a substitute for one’s own sensitive contemplation and careful observations. Books with their readymade formulas have dulled our vision and slackened the mind. Living by other people’s experiences, research, and opinions, we have lost our self-confidence and we fail to observe things for ourselves. Parents find lessons not from books, but from inside themselves.”
RESOURCES
Classes
Yaffa Maritz runs Listening Mothers classes for mothers and their babies, and Reflective Parenting classes for moms and dads of children 5 and younger. Classes are offered in Seattle and on the Eastside; learn more at Listening Mothers.
Blogs
Yaffa Maritz blogs at Community of Mindful Parents.
Dr. Wendy Sue Swanson blogs at Seattle Mama Doc.
Books
Instinctive Parenting: Trusting Ourselves to Raise Good Kids by Ada Calhoun
Beyond Smart: Boosting Your Child’s Social, Emotional, and Academic Potential by Linda Morgan
