Evans — Parenting, it turns out, is an adaptable skill

The Armchair Mayor News is very pleased to welcome Kara Evans to the roster of columnists. Kara, a mom and a former newsroom assistant at the Kamloops Daily News, will write about parenting.

COLUMN — When I was first approached by the team at the Armchair Mayor News to pen a parenting column, I must admit that I was a little surprised. What do I know about parenting? Here I am, a first-time mom figuring it all out on the fly, but isn’t that how it’s supposed to go?

While it’s said that women are born with a natural instinct to nurture, we are certainly not born with answers to every question that may arise, and boy, are there many.

Before I go ahead and start offering honest anecdotes and not-necessarily-good advice, allow me to just give you, the faithful readers of A.M. News, a glimpse of what you might call my “parenting journey” so far.

My life has followed the old, “First comes love, then comes marriage,” rhyme almost to a T. My husband and I first started dating when we were 16 and after nine years of figuring out our lives, we decided to finally tie the knot. Just over a year later, we became first-time parents to an amazing little girl who’s now two years old.

While our decision to start a family was a conscience one, we were occasionally bombarded with the typical questions most parents-to-be face: If the pregnancy was planned, if we were choosing to find out the gender of the baby, if we had a birth plan, and so on.

It seems as though your parenting choices are put under a microscope before you even give birth, and as much as you try not to be concerned with the way others may perceive your decisions, you cannot help but try to justify every choice you make for you and your child. (For the record, the answers to those questions are as follows: Yes, yes, and kind of.)

I have certainly learned a lot in my past two years of being a stay-at-home mom, such as the difference between spit-up and throw up, a lesson learned during a middle of the night emergency room visit when my daughter was four days old, or that your first full night of sleep post-baby will only be ruined by the gut-wrenching feeling that something is clearly wrong with your child because your child, ma’am, does NOT sleep through the night.

The biggest lesson I, along with, I’m sure, every parent, have learned is that there’s no right or wrong way to raise a child. Parenting is an amazingly versatile and adaptable skill; what works for some may not work for others, and as the popular saying goes, “It takes a village to raise a child.” We depend on the insight and advice of others to determine what will and will not work for us individually.

With this new column for the Armchair Mayor News, my goal is to enlighten readers on what it’s like to be a parent today, from my own perspective as a Gen-Y mom. I hope to be able to share the lessons I’ve learned so far, sprinkled with a little bit of humor and a touch of sarcasm.

I fully expect many “back in my day” comments and differing opinions, and I welcome them with open ears. After all, who better to learn from than the seasoned professionals?

Kara Evans tweets from @KaraEvs and blogs on http://www.shewriteswords.com.