"WE DID EXACTLY THE SAME FOR BOTH AND THEY TURNED OUT COMPLETELY DIFFERENT!"

... Well yeah!

This has been on my mind this week. When you have a baby you realise people are of two trains of thought, either it's ALL about how you parent or it's ALL about the baby. No one ever says to you (what I think) the reality is... in that it's a bit of both. It's not nature VERSUS nurture. It's nature AND nurture working together and it's your job as a parent to anticipate through some divine intuition WHAT their nature is and HOW to nurture it. That's why it's a tough job. Because the best intentions will only get you so far some of the time and undoubtedly there are some truly EXCELLENT parents out there who have done all the "right" things and still bad-lucked their way to a tricky situation/child.

Now these two lines of thought. It's probably quite easy to believe that people who got a "good" or "easy" baby think it's all about the parenting and those who got a "fussy" or "difficult" baby conclude it doesn't matter WHAT  you do babies are who they are and trying to intervene is like trying to change the tides. Then I start thinking are the former people just lucky and smug with it or are the latter folk just copping out? I don't know. I think there are people guilty of both out there. Of course there are. If every person is different, then so is every parent. Why are trying to pigeon hole ALL babies? That in itself is a crazy concept surely?

Aaaaanyway... within this I hear parents say, and it's always in the same defensive high pitched tone as if they're replying to someone saying "why did you fuck up so bad?"... "WE DID EXACTLY THE SAME FOR BOTH AND THEY TURNED OUT COMPLETELY DIFFERENT!"

WELL OF COURSE!!! (Puts teacher hat on) I think about education. (I draw a lot of parallels between teaching and parenting, it's probably not as helpful as I think it is but it's the bulk of my experience with young people so it's my go to.) Now if there a set great way to teach then teacher training would be a simple handing out of ONE scheme of work for all children in the world, complete with lesson plans from now until you retire and the assumption that this will work for all. Why don't they do that? Because every child is different and it would be ridiculous to think that you could apply the same learning/teaching methods to all and expect the same results. So why do people assume the differently for parenting?

Lesson:

1. Remember this for Baby A 2. He/she is a different person. Do not be surprised if the same stuff doesn't work.

2. Find a short, witty but polite response to "WE DID EXACTLY THE SAME FOR BOTH AND THEY TURNED OUT COMPLETELY DIFFERENT!" that I can use...