Parenting Right From the Start. Vanessa Lapointe

       5 Big, Beautiful Mess

       Dr. Vanessa’s Parenting Principles

       PART TWO

       6 Sleeping

       7 Feeding and Eating

       8 Toilet Training

       9 Expression of Aggression

       10 Siblings

       11 The Transition to Caregivers

       Conclusion: The Magic of Growth

       Acknowledgements

       Notes

       Bibliography

       Index

       For Nathan and Maxwell

      With my eternal love for all that you are and all that you inspire.

       For David

      Thank you for showing up for you, and then for us—I love you infinity.

       For Gila

      You truly are doing the most important work of all—you showed me what love really is.

FOREWORD

      WE ALL KNOW that parenting is the hardest task in the entire world. Nothing challenges us more than raising these little humans. In my own foray on this journey, I was constantly befuddled by all the advice I was getting and felt overwhelmed trying to decide what kind of parent I wanted to be: Tiger? Helicopter? Lawnmower? Who was I? What was my parenting style? Frankly, I spent the early years of my parenting searching for the answers to these questions and finding none. I felt as many parents feel—desperate and frustrated.

      It was then I realized I had been looking in the wrong places. The answers couldn’t come from the traditional models of parenting as they espoused control before connection. I was seeking the opposite: connection before control. The answers needed to emerge from within my own consciousness and through the elevation of my own inner awareness and worth.

      It was here that the seeds of conscious parenting were birthed. It was here, through my own struggles as a mother, desperate to connect better with my daughter, that I discovered a passion for conscious parenting and began to write books on it. I truly believe conscious parenting is the only way we will evolve as a planet and heal the next generations of children. This is why I am supportive of this wonderful book by Dr. Vanessa Lapointe; it encapsulates the message of conscious parenting in an artful and insightful manner. Those who read Parenting Right From the Start will delight in its eloquence and grace.

      Dr. Vanessa’s book intuitively captures the power that parenting has to transform the inner world of the parent and thereby, the child. Firmly grounded in the principles of conscious parenting, this book speaks to the challenges every parent faces—from sleep struggles to toileting troubles to sibling rivalry. In this unique work, Dr. Vanessa has merged consciousness with the beautiful principles of attachment to help parents practice concrete skills with their children in real time.

      Dr. Vanessa’s own personal experiences as a mother, combined with her decades of professional expertise, allows her to write with passion, relevance, and remarkable compassion for the unique journeys each one of us undergoes in the parenting process. You will read her words and immediately feel a significant shift in connection with your children. You will understand what has been blocking you and you will discover the courage it takes to remove these barriers to what you desire most: a close relationship with your most beloved children.

      When I met Dr. Vanessa at one of my workshops, I knew immediately that here was a woman who not only was a heartfelt mother, but also a highly talented psychologist. She has the capacity to understand the human spirit like few can, and she’s able to communicate her insights with an ease that is truly transformational. It makes me so proud to be part of this book’s journey into the world because I know it has tremendous power to change how parents treat their children. Read it, absorb it, and find a wonderful path of truer connection with your children.

       SHEFALI TSABARY, PHD

      Author of The Awakened Family and The Conscious Parent

INTRODUCTION

       START AS YOU WISH TO GO

      I WILL NEVER FORGET how it felt to find out that I was expecting my first son. I was a graduate student at the time, and had eyes only for the finish line of convocation. Four years and I would have a doctoral degree. Finally, I would be able to practise in my chosen field. But the universe had other plans. Around the end of my first year of doctoral studies I began to wonder if I had a low-grade virus or some other illness that was causing me to be so fatigued all the time. I booked an appointment with my physician, determined to get to the bottom of it. Imagine my surprise when test results revealed that I was pregnant. The father of my children had the wisdom to snap a picture of me right in that moment. The look on my face says it all: absolute disbelief mixed with a significant glimmer of excitement. I didn’t know it yet, but right then and there everything changed.

      Not long after, I had a miscarriage scare. As I was rushed in for an ultrasound, I remember thinking, “I have only known the possibility of this baby for two short weeks. How am I so attached to him already?” At that point, I had been pregnant for only about ten weeks, but when the flickering image of my son’s little heart finally presented itself on that ultrasound screen I sobbed with relief. In fact, I cried so intensely and for so long that the technician insisted I pull it together so she could complete her exam.

      From there, I found it difficult to relax into the certainty of the pregnancy. I made many worried visits to my physician, thinking something must be wrong. At one such appointment I said to her, “I just can’t wait for him to be born. Then I can stop worrying!” She looked at me with the knowing eyes of a mother and a professional who has seen it all. “Oh, sweetheart,” she said, “that’s when the real worrying begins.” I didn’t want to believe her—and in truth, there’s been so much good alongside the rest that the scales have certainly balanced—but, in a way, she was right.

      I was not prepared emotionally or otherwise for parenthood, despite being a psychologist in the making. I watched my baby son closely. I revelled in the miracle of him while fretting about his current cold. I delighted in his first smiles, in those moments when his sweet toes made their way to his mouth, and even when I was surprised by a baby boy’s wayward plumbing. But alongside all of that, I felt a shift in me that was unsettling. I knew something about who I was, and I understood myself as changed, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on how.

      As happens, I had so many things to consider as a parent. Should I sleep train or not? Should I baby-wear? Is child-led weaning and feeding the way to go? Is my baby supposed to be socializing with other babies? Is co-sleeping okay or not? How do I manage behaviour when those first tantrums emerge? Like many parents, I turned to medical practitioners for advice, as well as to other parents, my own parents, my in-laws, and my siblings who were raising children. The messages were mixed, and they left me feeling more confused.

      I remember thinking I had no choice but to sleep train. I sat outside my baby’s door, trying to take to heart his father’s reassurance that we were doing the right thing. I lasted four awful minutes. As a graduate student, my clinical supervisor had trained me on what constituted a “good timeout.” I tried it. Once. It also felt awful. I joined a baby and parent group for the socialization because that’s what new moms did, but I felt like my baby needed time with me most of all. I determined I would stop breastfeeding