If your parents and/or your partner’s parents are still alive, chances are you’re having conversations about what happens after the birth of your baby. And when parents are becoming grandparents for the first time, the intensity is generally heightened. Complex shifts are underway as children become parents and parents become grandparents. As you birth yourself into parenthood, huge tectonic shifts occur in the bedrock of your relationship with your parents. Your relationship with each other has developed over years and decades—solidifying your roles as parent and child. They are used to being the parent with all that that involves, including decision-making rights over parenting styles. This is big, and it’s often disorienting while the shift happens and new roles settle into place. It is normal for this reorientation to cause friction, upset, and conflict. It is unfamiliar territory for everyone involved, and no one yet knows how to behave toward and around each other in their new identity. This change in decision-making power extends to parenting styles. As the parents, it’s your choice whether or not you accept the opinions, advice, or guidance from the new grandparents, and it’s also your right to ask them to withhold certain opinions or judgments that you don’t want to hear. It’s normal to reflect on your own upbringing and what you would like to keep and change about the way you were raised, while at the same time exploring new parenting concepts and learning new information that may not have been available to your parents when they were raising you. Sometimes, it isn’t a matter of style but one of memory! No parenting is perfect since perfection is an unattainable illusion. But it is your right to do the best job you can according to what you and your partner think is best. Turning toward the relationship helps develop a stronger partnership between parents in the co-parenting process. Make supporting your partner a higher priority than pleasing your parents or other well-meaning advice-givers. Your relationship will benefit from actions that place your partner and your relationship closer to the center of importance. What’s more, you have the right to screw up parenting in your own unique way. In fact, you will screw it up in your own way. You get to make mistakes just like your parents did. Everyone makes mistakes in parenting. Even if you do the absolute best job you can, there will be times when you or your children reflect back on their childhood and wish you had done something differently. What’s more, remember that it is not your responsibility to make other people, including family, comfortable with your parenting decisions. With extended family, practice building a bridge of shared positive intention whenever possible. Here are four suggestions on how to build a bridge of understanding:
