Why being intentional and not incidental is important while raising your child?

Before your baby arrived, you probably read a bunch of parenting books, watched other parents with their kids, and maybe even swore you’d be a better parent than your own. At that point, you felt pretty confident about your parenting choices.

And then, your baby arrived, your cute little bundle of joy, a tiny human with her own thoughts and desires and even some bit of her own personality. Suddenly the whirlwind of it all left you feeling completely unprepared and confused.

At this point you get into survival mode and quickly pick up tools from your own childhood (because that’s what comes to us naturally) or you start reacting to incidents focussing on ‘fixing’ the immediate problem at hand rather than thinking of its long term repercussions.  

Want me to give you an example? Your baby bumps her head against the floor and starts crying nonstop. You rush over and before you know it, you’re hitting the floor saying, “maro isko dhishum dhishum, how dare you hurt my baby.” She calms down instantly. Phew, crisis averted!

What if I told you by repeatedly doing this you are unintentionally teaching her that hurting back is an acceptable way to handle pain or conflict. You are potentially reinforcing revenge behavior or a mindset of “it’s ok to hurt someone if they hurt you”. And I won’t lie but I myself started here until I realized what message I was actually sending.

That’s when I began looking at my reactions differently. This is where intentional parenting comes in. I won’t get into the definition or who coined the term or where this comes from. There are tons of parenting styles and honestly, as a mother myself, I don’t really fully align with any specific approach, but what has worked for me is being intentional in the choices I make - whether it’s the food I put on the table or how I react to a situation, or even handling a temper tantrum. Being intentional about how my choices affect my child in the long term and how my actions and reactions are shaping his worldly view, including what values he picks up, is what I practice with my 3.5-year-old. 

Whether this really helps him grow into a “a confident person with the right values” only time will tell. But I do know that being intentional and mindful has made parenting lighter, easier and more fun for me.

If you’ve ever felt like you’re just firefighting as a parent, this series will help you pause and parent with more intention. It’s not about being perfect, it’s about feeling more confident in your choices, lowering the guilt and moving from just surviving the day to actually enjoying it.