When my husband and I were young, our parents used corporal punishment, and when we first became parents we parented in a similar fashion. Neither of us felt like that was who we wanted to be as parents. We wanted to keep the good of our childhoods without carrying forward the negative or toxic. We have often prompted our children to do the same and make their marriage and parenting better. Within our parenting journey we found Attachment Parenting International. With this new knowledge we grew and changed, but those changes did not remove the choices we had previously made. Our older children remember being hit as punishment as a consequence of our actions.
Options in life are essential. Each of us makes decisions based on what we know, where we are physically and emotionally, who we are, where we see ourselves now and in the future, who we depend on, and who depends on us. While the variables are extensive and the possibilities endless, they often feel constrictive and limited. The choices we make impact the choices we have. You can’t take back 10 years of tobacco use that has lead to your current health crisis, or reverse the impact on your child of drug use during your pregnancy, but you can choose now to do better and be better. While starting over, changing course, improving the now doesn’t take away the consequences of previous decisions, it can create beneficial change to your future. You can choose today to do better, be better, have better, and no one has the right to limit you.
Part of advocacy is helping others find their way “right choices”. As a nurse, part of my responsibility is to assist patients in their ability to choose what is best for them in the moment they are in, without judgment or attempting to convey my opinions and biases onto their choices. There are risks and benefits to every option, and those risks and benefits depend on you. When you know more you do better!
http://www.attachmentparenting.org/
Diverse Transitions Birth Services 