If I Had to Start Parenting From Scratch, Here’s the First Thing I’d Give Up

Not screen time.

Not sugar.

Not plastic toys.

I’d give up comparing myself to other parents online.

I remember one evening after we’d finally got our daughter to sleep. The kitchen still hadn’t been tidied, there were toys scattered across the living room floor, and we’d spent most of dinner negotiating over three mouthfuls of pasta before she proudly announced she was “completely full.”

I collapsed onto the sofa and did what so many of us do without thinking. I picked up my phone.

Within minutes I was watching another family. Their home looked calm. Their child happily ate a colourful dinner, there was a beautiful play setup in the corner of the room, and the caption spoke about connection, consistency and slow parenting.

And although I knew I was looking at a carefully chosen moment, I still felt it.

That quiet question.

Are we getting this wrong?

Here’s what I’ve realised since. Nik and I talk about this a lot, because we both feel it, just on different evenings.

Comparing ourselves to other parents online costs us the very thing we’re searching for.

Confidence.

Not confidence that we’re perfect. Confidence that we know our own child. Because comparison has a strange way of making us distrust what we already know.

There have been times we’ve questioned an approach simply because someone online seemed so certain theirs was better. Maybe we should respond differently. Maybe we should introduce a new routine. Maybe we should buy that toy everyone recommends.

Then we’d try it. And more often than not, we’d find ourselves coming back to what we’d been doing in the first place.

Not because our way was the “right” way.

Because it was the right way for our daughter.

We’ve also had moments that probably wouldn’t impress the internet. The occasional dinner of toast because it was one of those evenings. A bedtime that happened later than planned because we were too busy building a den in the living room. Days where we chose connection over sticking rigidly to the schedule.

According to some corners of the internet, those moments might look like mistakes.

To our daughter, they were just childhood.

We all get glimpses of each other’s lives. Very few of us see the whole story.

That’s why we’ve started asking ourselves a different question whenever comparison creeps in.

Not,

“What are they doing?”

But,

“What does our daughter need from us right now?”

The answer is almost never found on a screen.

It’s found in the room.

Watching her.

Listening to her.

Learning her.

So next time you feel that pull to compare, try asking that one question before you pick up your phone. What does she need from me right now. That’s it. That’s the whole practice.

We’d love to hear from you.

What’s one thing you do differently from “the internet” that actually works for your child?