Mayako Kuna on Nostr: Sports vs parenting: I have a sports fanatic brother in law who is constantly pushing ...

Sports vs parenting:

I have a sports fanatic brother in law who is constantly pushing himself to do more and more challenging races. He exercises so much that he has been diagnosed with sports addiction. Whenever he enters a new challenge, I have a conundrum, whether to cheer him on, or to gently remind him that maybe doing a 100 mile race in the alps is not the best way to beat the addiction. I choose the advice for after the race and support before and during. The whole family is there for him, cheering him on and pushing him forward in his endeavors.

Almost two years ago now, I gave birth to our daughter. Me and my husband had talked a lot about what kind of parents we wanted to be, and agreed that spending the first years of her life with her was more important than working and we are privileged enough to take a few years off of work to focus on her. During this same period, we decided to move to a countryside abroad and started renovating an old farm to build us a house. It has been a really tough year, and parenting the way we think is best for our daughter continues to be really demanding. When we are asked by friends and family about how we are doing, we usually say that we are doing well, which is true, we are. But occasionally, we share the experiences of difficult days and I am flabbergasted by the reactions. It mostly comes down to the fact that we chose to do it the hard way and hence we have no right to complain that its hard.

Now, coming to the example of my brother in law, or any sportsperson for that matter, (I use him as a representing figure). So he chooses to work out hours on end for his well being, or in this case despite his well being and yet when he says that he is tired, almost everyone empathizes with him. "Of course you are tired, try to get some rest", he is told with so much love and care. But when our daughter has had a rough night and we have not slept because we were up all night soothing our baby, we are met with a very judgmental tone and a lot of unsolicited advice on everything we are doing wrong as parents. How is it that his choice to put himself through ordeal for himself trump our choice to go through ordeals for our child? How come we never tell athletes who are suffering that if they would just stop doing sports and just sit on the couch watching television, they would not suffer?I

I am still breastfeeding her, she sleeps with us, she does not go to day care, we speak in our native languages with her and everytime there is a conversation about any developmental milestone where she is a bit behind, we are blamed for it.

We are not going to change ourselves nor our parenting style. We have decided on this path with the best of interest for our little one and no amount of criticism from the " normal" western parenting gurus is going to change that. And this note is also not about whining or playing a martyr. I am just astounded by the double standard of the people around us. In any other field in life, when you share difficulties and shortcomings, we try to calm the., cheer them, uplift them. But a set of new parents who are trying to raise a child to the best of their abilities are met with criticism and snarky comments. How have we evolved as the only mammals who tries to separate an infant from its mother constanly? How have we made a conversation about leaving your kids to be looked after and raised by strangers so light and casual?

I completely understand parents that have to take their kids to day care. I get that not everyone is privileged enough to have the choices that we had. But when the last resort is made out to be the first choice, and parents like us have to somehow defend our choices for not choosing the so called normal route, it makes me wonder if maybe this separation, this distance between parents and children from such a young age is also a contributor to the state of mental health around us.

Thank you for entertaining my chain of thoughts!