Meghan Markle, who has just begun her parenting journey as mother to baby boy Archie, has got the most important piece of advice from Michelle Obama.
The former FLOTUS and mother to daughters Malia and Sasha shared her advice on parenting in an interview with the Meghan, who is guest-editing the September issue of a British magazine.
In the interview, Michelle talked about why parents sometimes had to just let things go. “Try as we might, there’s only so much we can control. And, boy, have I tried — especially at first. As mothers, we just don’t want anything or anyone to hurt our babies. But life has other plans. Bruised knees, bumpy roads and broken hearts are part of the deal,” she was quoted as saying.
With most parents trying to regulate their children’s lives at every step, the impact of being a helicopter or lawnmower parent has become a matter of debate among experts today. Studies have shown that children of parents who tend to hover over them are less equipped to deal with challenges later on. Again, when parents tend to do things on behalf of their children, it restricts their development and does not teach them to be responsible for their own actions.
There is a fine line between being involved in your child’s life and being overprotective, which parents need to take into account or it can only add to their own stress level. And parents like Crystal Lowery, comedian and mother of two, agree, who recently took to social media to talk about how it is “exhausting” to be a hypervigilant parent. Read what she wrote
here.
“Motherhood has also taught me that my job is not to bulldoze a path for them in an effort to eliminate all possible adversity. But instead, I need to be a safe and consistent place for them to land when they inevitably fail; and to show them, again and again, how to get up on their own,” Michelle continued.
Talking about how the former First Lady is raising her daughters, she said, “In some ways, Malia and Sasha couldn’t be more different. One speaks freely and often, one opens up on her own terms. One shares her innermost feelings, the other is content to let you figure it out. Neither approach is better or worse, because they’ve both grown into smart, compassionate and independent young women, fully capable of paving their own paths.”
Michelle added, “I tell them that I hope they’ll keep trying on new experiences until they find what feels right. And what felt right yesterday might not necessarily feel right today,” she said. “Becoming who we are is an ongoing process, and thank God – because where’s the fun in waking up one day and deciding there’s nowhere left to go? That’s something I wish I’d recognized a little earlier.”