journey of raising their children and helping them to grow up. Many of my clients are parents with children over the age of three who are presenting with challenges such as mental health issues, developmental exceptionalities, suicidal tendencies, self-harm, rebellion, or other difficulties along their developmental journey. During my almost twenty years of working to support parents and children through all sorts of challenges—and in figuring it out personally along the way—I have come to an understanding. I believe that many of these issues could potentially have been prevented if things had happened differently in the child’s first few years of life. These first precious years are crucial when it comes to laying the foundation for what follows.
And yet, the dominant pop culture often has parents raising their babies, toddlers, and preschoolers in ways that are no longer supported by the science of child development. We fall into this pop-culture parenting trap because of the transfer of beliefs, from one generation to the next, about who children really are. The “original sin” view of the child, for example, prevalent in the Middle Ages and into the early 1600s, propagated the sense that children are born full of evil and require adult direction to be purged of it. In the late 1600s, the “blank slate” view had adults believing that children were hollow vessels just waiting to be filled and moulded by our guiding hand. And let’s not forget the “flowery meadows” view, popular in the 1700s, which had grown-ups somewhat neglectfully releasing their children to the proverbial flowery meadows to blossom without adult interference. Though none among us would likely admit to a staunch espousing of any of these biases, the reality is that their influence continues to invade the minutiae of day-today parenting. We are irritated by the inconvenience of development and want to hurry it up with techniques and strategies. We are frustrated when children don’t respond as we think they should. We set consequences and mete out punishments to get them to fall into line. Well-intentioned, all of it, but also antiquated and out of touch with the science—and heart—of child development.
Beyond the invasion of bias, our dominant child-raising pop culture has also flourished due to the misguided twisting of developmental science to suit the needs of the time-starved, outcome-focused modern world. We don’t have time for development to play out naturally, so we try to hurry it along. We seek experts who can crack the code and give us tricks and strategies to this end. We fret about university acceptance and life success almost from a child’s first breath. We hyper-schedule our children’s lives with enrolment in every possible enriching extracurricular activity to make sure they are in the running, forgetting that nature already has a brilliant plan in the works that will have our child in the lead by a long shot.
But how are soon-to-be parents and parents of young children to know all of this? There is no parenting handbook that walks you through the importance of doing a deep dive into your familial history to understand your biases, to grasp the influences that shaped your own mind, and to come to terms with how all of this might affect what you bring to the raising of your own child. That non-existent handbook also fails to explain the advances that have been made in the psychology and understanding of child-raising practices. It can literally take the accumulated experience of a few graduate degrees in psychology and child development, sloshing your way through the trenches with a child or two, and spending your life’s fortune on psychotherapy to make sense of it. And who does that as part of the preparation for baby’s arrival? “Honey, I think we should go with a neutral colour in the nursery—and also, let’s review our family tree to see what fear-based parenting practices might have been transmitted down the line,” said probably no soon-to-be parent ever. Is it any wonder, then, that there are very few (if any) among us who can honestly say that we were completely ready for the tidal wave of emotion and the life-changing interpersonal dynamics that can unravel even the most robust new parent?
During the emotional roller coaster and challenges of welcoming a child to the world, many parents are overwhelmed and frustrated. Since children don’t arrive clutching a manual, parents sometimes tend to raise them according to the practices of past generations. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Today, we can draw on the very latest science of child development, and an ever-deepening understanding of the complex psychological interplay between parental self-growth and a child’s healthy growth. Combined, these gifts offer parents an opportunity to raise their children well, right from the start.
This is what brings me—and, I hope, you—to this book. It is my greatest hope that I might offer all parents an alternative path, one that is fuelled by the science of child development, the very best that psychology offers, and my own journey as a mother. I believe this is a better path than those we have been treading thus far. A path that will allow you to raise a human being, from the beginning, in exactly the way nature intended. A path that will allow you to start as you wish to go, and an overview of where to begin your journey so it feels tangible and approachable rather than ethereal and slightly beyond reason. A path that may keep you out of my office with your behaviourally challenging six-year-old, your anxious and overwhelmed nine-year-old, your reactive and tuned-out fourteen-year-old, or your despairing and undone eighteen-year-old. A path that will have you laying a conscious and informed foundation for your child’s upbringing before they take their first breath, or at least early on enough in their sweet little life that the foundation you’ve laid will require only slight tweaks and modifications (and not full demolition!) in order to be truly spectacular. A path that will not only have your child growing as nature intended but will also leave you open to receiving the greatest gift you will ever be offered. I’m talking about the gift of growing up yourself—a gift that will allow you to live your fullest, best life and, along the way, be fully available to your child as they do their own growing. And the best thing about this gift? It comes direct from your child’s heart.
This book is organized into two parts. Part one provides a clear, easy-to-understand foundation that will set you up for really making sense of how to support your growing little. I pull back the curtain on the human mind so that you can understand the origins of your own big feelings about parenthood. I explain the science of attachment and walk you through exactly how this essential-to-life relationship forms between you and your baby. I take you into the inner workings of the growing brain so you can see what is happening for your child as you literally direct their neurons to connect in specific ways. I will reveal to you the natural hierarchy of the parent-child relationship and champion you to head out of the gates fully in the lead, so your child can rest capably into your care. And I will share with you the secret wonder of why toddler tantrums are a parenting win, and how healthy development includes lots of ups and downs. At the end of part one, you’ll find “Dr. Vanessa’s Parenting Principles”—a handy primer to remind you of what you most need to absorb from this book in order to parent right from the start.
In part two, we get down to the work of applying all that is explained in part one to the nitty-gritty reality of your everyday parenting life. Are you trying to sort out the always-tricky issue of sleep? Do you have a child who is refusing to feed, or nursing constantly, or has become incredibly picky about food? Do you have a little one who is biting or hitting or kicking? I’ll help you navigate the wild world of toilet training, figure out what sibling rivalry is really all about, and manage the transition that occurs when new adults, such as caregivers, are introduced to your child’s life.
It’s typically said that babies don’t come with a manual, but perhaps this book is that manual. Read on. You’ve got this. You really can parent right from the start. And if at any point you feel unsure about that, just know that I’ve got you. We’ll get there together, one chapter at a time.
1
A PARENT IS BORN
BY THE TIME I finished graduate school
