Sarah Norris - The Baby Detective (00:01.55)
Hello and welcome to Mama Island, where we travel away from the noise and the pressure of real life to a safe and quiet place where we can spend time figuring out how to be great mamas without losing who we are and what we love doing and how to get the mama life we really want.
Hello. Today, we're looking at how we can make life healthier and more enjoyable for ourselves, our baby and our whole family, not by doing more, but by doing less
because we're going to be talking about micromanaging, the scourge of modern -day parenting.
We'll be thinking about what is going on in our heads and our hearts and how that's affecting how we behave, which is never easy.
So instead of sitting around the campfire, I'm taking you all on a gentle walk along sandy tracks through beautiful tropical forests with dappled sunlight gently filtering through the leaves above.
As we walk, the gentle rhythm of our footsteps relaxes us and allows our minds to explore freely.
I think we've all experienced the feeling of being micromanaged at some time or another, and it's never a nice experience, but it's more than just not nice.
It can be the reason people leave jobs and relationships, and it can cause really serious problems if we're exposed to it for long enough and today I want to talk about how trying to micromanage your baby can have an equally serious impact on your mental health, how it can cause you to lose your objectivity and how it can lead to missed opportunities for you and your baby.
The thing is, most of us are not micromanagers by nature, but somehow seem to end up that way when we have a baby and I wonder if it's because we're under so much pressure to get it right, we become so terrified of getting it wrong and actually end up thinking and acting from fear and uncertainty, that makes us feel like things are out of our control, so then we double down on micromanaging to try and regain some of that control and make things worse.
Of course, it doesn't help that everywhere we look, there are scare stories of terrible things that will happen if we do something and if we don't do something. So it's hardly surprising.
Okay, so let's explore it all a bit more. I'm going to read you a list of some of the more easily recognized traits of a micromanager and I want you to think honestly about your life at the moment. Not just about parenting, but about your whole life.
How many of these traits can you relate to?
1. Unwilling to delegate- Feeling you have to do it all yourself or it won't get done properly or on time.
2. Needing too much control- afraid that things will go wrong if you're not in charge.
3. Focusing on minute details- How things have to be done a certain way or in a certain order.
4. Giving extremely detailed instructions to a partner or carer- You can't just say feed the baby. You have to give 20 bullet points so they do it exactly like you do it.
5. Needing constant updates. You go out leaving baby with your partner or a carer. You know they know how to care for baby but you still have to keep calling or texting or checking your phone for updates.
6. Discouraging others from making decisions- You make all the decisions so you can stay in control because you don't quite trust anyone else.
7. Encouraging dependence- You like the fact that you can settle or feed baby better than anyone else and don't like your partner offering to do things or take baby for a walk, or coming up with a new way to wind baby or taking over any of what you see as your things.
8. Focusing too much on data- constantly checking apps for what baby should be doing and when, talking about your baby's age in weeks, counting every ml of milk or second of breastfeeding, being triggered to worry at every latest research shows article.
9. Incorrect prioritising- You're worrying other mums will think you're a mess instead of wondering why you're a mess and taking better care of yourself.
10. Working long hours- I know there's a lot to do, but you don't have to do it all. You can leave things for tomorrow or ask for help or delegate, but somehow you're so used to doing it all yourself, you've forgotten it can be any other way.
Number 11. Redoing other people's work- Your partner checks the nappy and you check it again. They get the feed ready and you check the temperature of the milk. They dress baby and you go and change the outfit.
There. How did that feel as I read the list? I know I was squirming at a few of them that I recognised, but I think we're all feeling something similar.
I think it's important to pause here a minute and recognise that the reason so many of us can relate to these traits is because as women we have been taught by society to accept the majority of the burden of running a home and raising children, so we are already more vulnerable than men to be susceptible to micromanaging a baby. It's disgustingly unfair, but now we're aware of it, we can start trying to fight back wherever possible even if that means pressing reset on the whole family.
I mentioned in the introduction that micromanaging can have a terrible effect on your mental health and that's what we're going to look at now.
Now, don't get me wrong, there are times in our everyday life when we need to focus on details to do certain things, o focusing on detail when it matters is healthy, but getting stuck like that in micromanage mode is very bad for your mental health.
Something I want to make clear here is that the idea you can keep every aspect of your baby life under control is total fiction. I'm sorry, but it's impossible to achieve, so as soon as you start trying, you are setting yourself up for failure.
When you buy into the idea that there is a way to micromanage your baby that will make them better, smarter, develop faster, be happier, you are actually more likely to end up doing the opposite because the goals you're aiming for are unattainable and you're making yourself and your family unhappy in the process.
No one can live up to these artificial expectations, so you lose your confidence and either feel like a failure or try harder and make things worse, your standards can become unrealistically high for yourself and the whole family, and you are all constantly frustrated, angry or confused.
You can end up feeling unsupported and attacked or doubted and angry.
On a hormonal level, you're flooded with adrenaline and cortisol as your body tries to deal with your emotions and that has a knock -on effect on all your other systems. Your sleep gets worse, you eat too much or not enough or you eat unhealthy foods or turn to alcohol.
You feel on some level that something or even everything is going wrong, that life isn't going the way you expected and you either think it's other people's fault so you get resentful or aggressive or you think it's your fault and you start to feel inadequate and vulnerable.
It could be on a small scale that just leaves you always feeling just a bit worried or disappointed or it could be on a much bigger scale where you feel like you just can't cope, you're a bad man and that everyone else can do it or enjoys it so there must be something wrong with you.
With these negative thoughts and feelings, it's easy then to gradually withdraw and stop going out or communicating so you can become socially isolated and then you only have your own thoughts for company. When this happens, it's easy to lose your objectivity and your world can shrink to a small, tight, unhappy ball.
Is it any wonder that mother's mental health problems are on the increase?
The second thing to suffer is your objectivity, your ability to think clearly and recognise what matters and what doesn't.
When you're so focused on little details, you lose sight of the big picture and without that it's almost impossible to make good choices and decisions and it also makes you more vulnerable to follow the crowd instead of following your own head and heart.
The whole Tummy Time thing is a perfect example of pointless micromanagement. Around 1940, parents were told to put their babies down to sleep on their tummies. Then, after the drastic increase in SIDS was noticed, the Back to Sleep campaign in 1994 reversed that and the numbers of babies dying from SIDS started to come down.
Now somewhere in the last 10 years, as the trend for micromanaging grew some well -meaning person came up with the idea that we needed to give our babies physiotherapy in the form of tummy time to counter the fact that they were no longer sleeping on their tummies.
So now, religiously, every mother I speak to asks how and when and for how long they should be doing tummy time, all terrified that if they don't, their baby will grow up to, what, have a floppy head or a weak spine?
Everyone talks about it, so you think it must be true so you don't bother questioning it. But if you only ever learn one thing from me, it's that you should question everything !!
Think about it. The human race has been evolving for about six million years without tummy time, and I think we've done a pretty good job.
We've migrated all over the world, climbed mountains, swum rivers, rowed boats all over the oceans. We fought battles, we dug canals and laid railways, we developed Olympics, gymnastics, dance, martial arts, all without any mention of wobble -headed weak spine problems due to lack of tummy time.
And also during this time, babies have been variously tightly swaddled, bound to wooden boards, carried in baskets on horses, strapped to people's backs and mostly put on their backs to sleep. All with no lasting effect because babies are programmed to move and develop the muscles and balance they need, pretty much whatever we do with them.
And if that doesn't reassure you, think about what has happened since 1994 when babies were switched to sleeping on their backs.
That was 30 years ago.
The trend for tummy time only started about 10 years ago.
So that leaves 20 years of babies just doing their own thing without tummy time.
Don't you think we might have noticed millions of babies growing up to be weak spined and wobble headed?
How many people under the age of 30 do you know who have weak heads or who can't stand up straight because they didn't do tummy time ?
When you stop to think and question it, it becomes obvious that the whole concept of tummy time is ridiculous and unnecessary, and it's just another example of irrational, fear -driven micromanagement that has infected even health professionals.
Honestly, I've searched for hours to try and find any real benefit and all I could come up with was that it might make baby roll a month earlier.
Well, that's just great considering as soon as they roll, they roll onto their fronts to sleep and we all start panicking about SIDS again.
The third negative consequence is the opportunities you can miss when you're busy trying to manage the unmanageable.
For you, that might be that you're so focused on getting baby to stick to naps at certain times for a certain number of minutes that you don't actually leave the house so you become isolated.
Or you think your baby must always be put down to sleep, so you miss out on cuddling them while they sleep and that's a lovely thing.
Or you don't go away travelling anywhere in case you can't keep the same level of control and everything unravels. So you miss out on sharing your baby with family and friends or you miss weddings, christenings or celebrations.
There are consequences for baby too, because our efforts to steer or drive or improve their development means they miss out on the time, space, opportunity and freedom to explore their world in the way they want and at a pace that's right for them.
I've seen mums be a bit enthusiastic about managing play where babies move from one play activity to the next, so a baby who has been under the baby gym having a great time, trying to grab a dangling toy and is on the verge of doing it, is suddenly moved to do tummy time or read a book or sing songs and their breakthrough moment is derailed.
And another thing I see is parents with a new toy for their baby.
They show it to them, they show them how it works, they wave it around in front of them, they put it in their baby's hands, they show them how to make it rattle or ding. Now obviously they mean well but basically, they've just robbed the baby of the opportunity to explore the toy for themselves, to discover its potential for themselves, and just think of all the thinking, questioning and problem -solving chances that have been missed.
The thing is, this idea that we should be being very active, controlling, steering and driving certain aspects of our baby's lives, and that if we aren't, we're somehow failing as parents, is so common now that we don't question it and that's why I'm talking about it now.
Thinking about what we've just talked about.
Is there anything you're doing in your life that might gradually be relaxed?
Would that be a relief or would it feel scary?
If it feels scary, think about why that might be, and remember, you can always come and find me on Instagram and DM me if you need some reassurance or have any questions.
I want you to be happier, calmer, more relaxed and more confident.
I'd love to see you trust yourself and your baby more
As we've been talking, we've been walking along on our island and we're heading back towards our camp.
We're relaxed and have been enjoying the view, but now we're coming to a small river that we have to cross using stepping stones.
So now we have to stop enjoying the big picture because it's time to focus on details. We have to go in single file.
We have to look down carefully, judging the size of the stones, the size of our feet, the distance between the stones, the surface of the stones and the surface grip of our shoes. We have to think about moving carefully so we don't overbalance and maybe thinking about creating a rhythm of steps or halting to rebalance if we feel unbalanced. Because this is a new and challenging experience.
There, now we've all got across without any accidents.
So what happens?
Do we continue our walk in detail mode, looking down, focusing on every detail of how we walk, constantly checking our balance, worrying about falling?
Or do we switch back to the big picture focus now that the immediate problem is over and go back to our normal way of walking, totally trusting that our body knows how to walk without the need for micromanaging?
Of course, that's what we do and we can go back to being happy and relaxed.
But I feel like what's happening to parents today is we've been tricked by all the scare stories and social noise into getting stuck in the detail mode and forgotten how to zoom out away from the detail into the healthiest state of bigger picture normality, which is a much better place to be.
So hopefully this episode has opened your eyes to the dangers of micromanagement and how insidiously it can creep in and take over without you realising it.
You can go and leave our island and return home with new insight and a new way of looking at your mum alive and maybe start to think about gradually relaxing anything that feels tight and stressful, controlling or pushy.
Babies are a glorious force of nature, unexplained and unpredictable.
They're born with character traits already in place.
They're guided by their instincts and reflexes to survive and thrive, and they're following the same development patterns humans have been following for millions of years. They know what to do.
Yes, they are vulnerable.
Yes, they need our care and protection
But they don't need us to micromanage them.
And you?
You are a by -product of that same evolution.
You have the instincts and reflexes just like your baby, but you've grown, you've explored and experienced the world, gaining knowledge and reasoning skills, along with problem -solving strategies and coping skills.
So you're more than equipped with everything you need to care for your baby and raise a happy and healthy child.
So have faith in yourself.
That's it for today so I hope I've given you something useful to take back to your off -island life.
Have a great week and let me know if there's anything you want to hear more about, my contact and social media links are in the show notes.
Please come and get in touch with me, I'd love to hear from you.
Bye for now x
That's it for today and I hope you found something to love about our time together. If you did, then please take a second to hit subscribe and share it with anyone you know who could do with some time on our lovely island. And if you want to check me out on Instagram, I'm @The Baby Detective.
See you next time!
