Your Experience as a Baby
Myth: What happens to us as babies has no impact on the way we parent.
Fact: Your earliest experiences, particularly of relationships, have a significant impact on the way you relate to your baby and adapt to parenting now.
We tend to parent how we were parented. If the experience was not a good one, we may react by parenting in the opposite way, and this is rarely successful.
Exploring early life experiences helps you reflect on what informs your feelings and your parenting. It may inspire you to make decisions that meet the needs of your unique family - rather than meeting others' expectations or repeating your own parents' decisions. Many people tell us that doing this gives them ‘permission’ to trust their own instincts and to parent from the heart, with confidence and love.
Early experiences affect the wiring and function of the brain; yet it’s also true that human brains are continually growing and able to change (the brain is 'plastic'). Knowing what influences you can make it easier to let go of behaviours that aren't right for you, or your baby, today. The positive impact of this for your baby will be greatest if you let go of unhelpful beliefs and habits before conception; but it’s never too late, even if you are a grandparent.
What you can do - Spend some time considering your early experiences, ideally with support from a counselor or therapist trained in the field of early life issues.
Did you know?! Early relationships influence the mates we make in later life
As your baby’s brain is developing it is laying down a matrix of neurological “attractors” in its limbic, or emotional, region. These attractors act like magnets for others: through life, completely unconsciously, your baby’s attractors incline him or her to form relationships with others whose behaviour feels familiar, or in other words, mimics the behaviour experienced in the first relationships with mum and/or dad, siblings and others who are close (whether this is comfortable or not). Research by brain scientists is offering a physical explanation of the old adage that ‘we tend to marry our fathers/mothers’!