Intuition

vs.

Expert Advice

By Lu Hanessian

I was sitting in the doctor’s office with my baby

for his six-month well-check when I struck up a mom-to-mom chat with a woman sitting nearby.

    “How old is your daughter?” I ask.

    “Three months,” she coos.

    “How is everything?” I ask.

    “Oh, good I think. But I just wanted to ask the doctor today if it’s OK that I let her cry. I mean, I don’t want to, but I wanted to know if it’s OK if I do,” she explained.

    I thought about how much time we invest reading books during our pregnancies. How much we want to educate ourselves, prepare and foresee, organize and decorate. And I thought of how most mothers imagine a parenting journey filled with confidence and conviction, not a time filled with doubt and second-guessing of the most basic choices. Like how to respond to our own child.

    We tend to silence our voices to hear those of others who we believe may just know our baby better.

    What happens to our intuition? Is it that we lost it or never really cultivated it?

    Living in a left brain world of logic and linear thinking, parents can easily and unwittingly buy into a ducks-in-a-row approach to parenting where techniques and strategies are employed to control and manage kids. The issue is not whether it “works”” or whether it’s “effective,” but rather whether this mindset and stance allows for any real connection.

    Once we are focused on tactics, we cannot trust. The process, others or ourselves.

    If we cannot trust, we feel compelled to control outcomes.

    With those stakes, we are not investing in our intuitive voice but instead tuning our channel only to the voices which we think have the answers we are seeking.

    The trouble with these answers is not that they are wrong or right for our child and us, but that they presume the questions are the most essential and relevant ones. When we don’t rely on our own intuition, when we don’t trust our gut, we don’t trust our child’s gut either, and neither of us can navigate the choppy seas with much faith in the journey.

    So to the mom who wanted to know if it’s OK to let her baby cry, I ask, “What do you believe?”

    There will always be parenting experts, wonderful guiding light experts, to shed truth on our path if we need their support. But when we infuse our parenting with fear, doubt and anxiety, we no longer hear our own clarion voice and notice our baby’s cues, but tend to look to experts who either tell us what we want to believe or who can’t quite convince us of what we don’t.

    In any case, when we rely solely on doctors, therapists, coaches and advisors to connect the dots for us, we never allow ourselves to chart the course of our own pilgrimage. This kind of mistrust in our own ability to respond--our response-ability--becomes a painfully habitual way of tolerating the parenting journey--instead of exuberantly, bravely fulfilling the calling of a lifetime with all the terrifying gusto of a person who has boldly let her mistakes and flaws be her compass.

Copyright 2009 Lu Hanessian. All rights reserved.