Not long ago, my daughter said that I baby her too much. When I asked her how, she couldn't really define it. (Or was averse to doing so.)
I have been thinking about it and maybe I do. Trying to avoid it now.
One issue is that I still allow her to sleep in my room. (There is a 2 ft space between us, we use separate bedding and I have her memory foam mattress stacked on top of my very uncomfortable kind mattress. I also make sure she is asleep before I go to bed. And both of us are fully clothed.)
One reason for that situation is that we still need to finish re-doing her room. Lack of resources have kept it slow. Nobody is there to help me buy any furniture.
Aside from that I don't tend to think I do baby her. I allow her to make decisions. Guided ones much of the time. I allow her to make mistakes and learn from them. I do tend to explain things but that is teaching, not babying. Wanting her to understand things is not what I call babying.
I admit I don;t push her to do a lot of cleaning and such and need to stiffen up on that because she's a slob. Much harder when I don't have places for her to put things, though. Except Sterilite boxes.
Then I began to examine myself and why I would baby her. That was when I realized I probably do in some ways. For me, it is overcompensating for my own childhood. Or lack of one, to be precise. To a large degree, I went from child to adult in one night at the age of 9. More of a parent to my mother than she was to me. No father present but knew I may be illegitimate or not, so I basically had two fathers not present. White in a mostly black neighborhood, I usually felt out of place no matter where I was. By the age of 11, I was more parent to both my brothers than my mother was. I cooked, cleaned, washed dishes, did laundry and once had to pick up my brother from the principal's office when he took a gun to school. My mother gave me money and I paid bills for her. Or negotiated payments when she could not. I was not allowed to have friends. I was expected to be home after school instead of socializing and was not allowed to have friends in the house due to her paranoia. In another year, I would be working doing yard work and odd jobs to help bring grocery money in the house. All of this while attending school where I was forced to carry a knife to make sure I got home. I was always in the middle of violent battles between family members. Took a beating for dumping my mother's alcohol down the sink when she neglected to buy food but not booze. By 11, I had been stabbed, had my foot nailed to the floor with a thrown pair of scissors and got drunk for the first time. And saw a friend go to war who never came back. Had a teacher whose husband turned out to be a serial killer (without her knowledge).
This is the first time I thought of those things all together. Simply put, I do want my daughter to actually have a childhood. Not be shoved headfirst into what people refer to as "the adult world" which is not very adult at all.
I have been thinking about it and maybe I do. Trying to avoid it now.
One issue is that I still allow her to sleep in my room. (There is a 2 ft space between us, we use separate bedding and I have her memory foam mattress stacked on top of my very uncomfortable kind mattress. I also make sure she is asleep before I go to bed. And both of us are fully clothed.)
One reason for that situation is that we still need to finish re-doing her room. Lack of resources have kept it slow. Nobody is there to help me buy any furniture.
Aside from that I don't tend to think I do baby her. I allow her to make decisions. Guided ones much of the time. I allow her to make mistakes and learn from them. I do tend to explain things but that is teaching, not babying. Wanting her to understand things is not what I call babying.
I admit I don;t push her to do a lot of cleaning and such and need to stiffen up on that because she's a slob. Much harder when I don't have places for her to put things, though. Except Sterilite boxes.
Then I began to examine myself and why I would baby her. That was when I realized I probably do in some ways. For me, it is overcompensating for my own childhood. Or lack of one, to be precise. To a large degree, I went from child to adult in one night at the age of 9. More of a parent to my mother than she was to me. No father present but knew I may be illegitimate or not, so I basically had two fathers not present. White in a mostly black neighborhood, I usually felt out of place no matter where I was. By the age of 11, I was more parent to both my brothers than my mother was. I cooked, cleaned, washed dishes, did laundry and once had to pick up my brother from the principal's office when he took a gun to school. My mother gave me money and I paid bills for her. Or negotiated payments when she could not. I was not allowed to have friends. I was expected to be home after school instead of socializing and was not allowed to have friends in the house due to her paranoia. In another year, I would be working doing yard work and odd jobs to help bring grocery money in the house. All of this while attending school where I was forced to carry a knife to make sure I got home. I was always in the middle of violent battles between family members. Took a beating for dumping my mother's alcohol down the sink when she neglected to buy food but not booze. By 11, I had been stabbed, had my foot nailed to the floor with a thrown pair of scissors and got drunk for the first time. And saw a friend go to war who never came back. Had a teacher whose husband turned out to be a serial killer (without her knowledge).
This is the first time I thought of those things all together. Simply put, I do want my daughter to actually have a childhood. Not be shoved headfirst into what people refer to as "the adult world" which is not very adult at all.
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