Insight and intuition

While no one can predict the future or read minds, I believe that people who are closely attuned to each other have an intuition that is unmatched. Sometimes that comes simply from time together, and other times it just happens.

I'd like to think that mothers, as a whole, tend to have more intuitions and insights about their own children, which may be innate or resulting from the time together, especially in the child's first few years.

But if you don't have it, how do you find it? Is it something that can be learned? I'm not sure I can answer that.

Let's consider instead whether insight is truly necessary. As infants, children have only one way of expressing their needs. Most of them do it very well, and most parents learn to recognize what's wrong by how their child's cries sound. In order to physically raise a healthy child, you have to at least be willing to listen.

This continues, or should continue, as a child grows older. I don't think it happens often, though. Most children, as they grow up and become individuals, grow apart from their parents. I don't know if it's intentional for everyone. It isn't for me; in fact, it's been very hard trying to come to a decision regarding my relationship with my mom. Maybe this is just a natural occurrence for some families. Maybe the types of personalities involved make closely-bonded life impractical.

With my autistic son, it's always been more of a priority to try to understand how he feels, because he hasn't always talked. He's just learning now, and he's nowhere near catching up with his younger sister. For example, trying to understand why he was awake at midnight, shivering in his bed, was difficult. Once we understood that he wasn't cold or sick, but just needed to use the restroom, our task as parents became much harder. He refused to go in the bathroom because of what he saw through the window. We didn't see anything out of the ordinary, but he was terrified, and held on to the doorframe to keep from going in. We eventually got him into the bathroom, and afterwards, he fell asleep in minutes. What would have happened if we left him shivering in the bed? Was it worse for us to force him to face his fears, whatever they are? There's no way to know. I hope we did the right thing, based on our instincts and what we already knew about him.

If that's all we can do as parents, hope to do the right thing, based on how well we know our children, then it seems obvious that everyone should play a strong role in their child's life. If you don't spend time with your child, how will you ever know if they need you? And if you don't spend time with them, will they ever feel comfortable asking you for help?

There are many things I don't know about being the best parent to my kids, but I know I want to be there for them, even if they don't need me.