Does Family/Community Support Change With Children's Age?

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Comment by Nanny Naturale on June 8, 2012 at 18:46

With my first daughter I was fresh from breastfeeding counselor training and vigilant in creating, supporting and participating in a family-friendly community.  It was wonderful being around lots of natural families, midwives, doulas...inspiring and educating others and living on my own terms as a parent, which helped to educate my family about natural living and breastfeeding. 

With my second daughter I have mostly felt like I've done everything on my own and had very little support.  I have to vigilantly connect to affirming ideas and practices.  Mostly just not burning myself out.  I've gotten pretty good at it now that I don't have a lot of negative outside influence, but I have one outside influence that is very negative and I just live in a community that is not understanding and even a bit unsupportive.

For instance, one thing I've noticed that bothers me is when I'm out with my family and they are eating something.  My daughter is very curious and will ask "what's that?"  they will say "you can't have that"...or something similar.  There came to be some strange thing where my daughter would say "my mom will get mad if I eat that" or she would ask me if I would get mad if she ate bread or whatever.  I don't know, this may seem trivial, but I don't want my daughter to think about food like that or to think of me like that.  I'm not going to get mad at my daughter for eating anything and I don't talk about what she "can't have", I talk to her about what we like to eat.

This is a very small example of a lack of support for what we're doing.  I don't feel like I have anyone that I really feel comfortable having my kids around.  When I'm around my family I feel I have to listen carefully so I can make sure my kids understand different views, because I feel the people around me are limited and limiting on negative grounds.  Body image is a big part of it.  Everyone around me is overweight and very trendy.  My mom tells my daughter she needs to wear lip gloss and do her hair a certain way and dress a certain way, and I want my daughter to feel comfortable with who she is...my mom is also a shopaholic and I want my daughters to be comfortable with their lives and not feel attached to stuff and getting more stuff.

Just some ideas I'm trying to iron out. 

Comment by Karmyn on June 1, 2012 at 7:14

I know I could use an extra set of hands or two!  :)