2023 Author: Anita Thornton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-11-27 18:44
Being pregnant, no matter what job you do, it's quite an experience! Lots of unknowns, worries, great joys, small bereavements… And it's no different when you have a job like mine, that is, psychoeducation.
For five years, I have studied typical and atypical development in all its forms. I did many hours of internship with young people and their parents and wrote a thesis on the attachment relationship.
Then I worked with children of all ages, parents from all walks of life with their unique background and life story.
I listened, advised, confronted, sometimes, too. I encouraged, modeled skills to optimize, reinforce positive behaviors, reflect he althy family dynamics and sometimes, less. I questioned, sowed doubt, made people think.
I recommended videos, articles, websites, services.
Motivation and Confidence
But all this doesn't mean that I have all the answers, oh no!
As I often tell the parents and young people I work with, I am a tool. I can themshow how to use certain techniques, explore them with them but I cannot (nor want!) to use them for them. I can't want more than them. Because motivation, like trust, is the basis of a successful intervention.
All this knowledge and skills learned and developed does not make me an infallible future mother, oh no!
I am a mother-to-be certainly informed, sensitized, more critical or at least, quite nuanced in the face of various educational methods, but who also carries her life story in her backpack with all that that implies. Beautiful and less beautiful personal experiences, great successes but great failures, great confidence but also great worries.
Do I expect my child to be “just like in the parenting books”? Nope! I don't even expect to act like those same books.
Imperfect
I expect to make mistakes, to be discouraged, to experience disappointments, to be afraid, to be tired,to argue with my spouse, to be disappointed…to be imperfect.
I also expect small and great happiness, great successes, small and great pride, tender moments and great complicity.
I will be a mom, certainly a psychoeducator, but far from being perfect and having the answer to everything. I wish myself to continue to be indulgent with myself, to let go, to ask and then accept help from my loved ones, to be able to savorfully the small pleasures and to relativize the less pleasant moments which, inevitably, always end up passing.
And I wish you the same, dear mothers and mothers-to-be!
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