Know better, Do better

When we Know better, we can do better. This has recently become a saying that I tell myself often. It is no secret I have three kids. The oldest is 7 soon to be 8 and the youngest has recently just turned 1. In this time the recommendations and even some laws around what you should and shouldn’t do as a parent has changed. So if all this has changed in the 7/8 years since I first became a mum then just imagine how much thing have changed since my parents first became parents or my grandparents (I’m 27, just for points of reference).

So recently I have thinking about things I did with my eldest that I now wouldn’t do with my youngest. Which made me wonder if I had been a terrible parent before and ‘oh my poor 7 year old has suffered. Now here is the thing she has not suffered at all. My children always come first. I have always done my best with the knowledge I had at the time for my children.

So in these Seven years I have learnt a lot and when I look back I think i can;t believe I didn’t know that! So that is where this saying comes in. Now that I know I can do better. This all stems from a car seat advice group I am in on FB. Now I can’t remember this lady’s name and I really wish I did. I just remember she was grandmother and what she said. There was a person arguing against extended rear facing saying ‘in never did mine any harm to forward face as babies’. To which this grandmother responded, ‘It didn’t do mine any harm either but now that I no better I will do better for my grand kids and rear face them. Now this isn’t a post about car seats but in case you didn’t know I am pro rear facing (my four year old still refaces because its the safest way to travel) but about the fact that you don’t need to beat yourself up because you did things differently before that is no longer recommended. At that time you did your best with the information available and the advice given at thee time. New research has been done and now there are new recommendations, so people are doing things different.

I am doing things different with my youngest because now that I know better I will do better. Not that I was doing anything wrong or bad before. I just now have even more knowledge than before and can do even better than before. The more I learn the better I get and lets face it that is literally what parenting is all about. Everyone can tell you what they did and give advice but everybody started off not knowing what they were doing. There is no training to be a parent, you just learn as you go along. At the end of the day we are all learning something new, everyday. There will always be something new to learn and I will always be open to listening to knew ways to do things. So I will stop beating myself up over things I didn’t know and just keep learning.