Going Clean
Baby Steps to A Healthier Home for Your Baby
Fear.
Don’t tell me you haven’t felt it: Fear that you might not be a good parent. Fear that you won’t know what to do, what to say or how to act? These fears are justifiable, and they’re also shared by most of us, at least the first time around. The fact is that being a parent is hard. Not just because it’s hard work (it is), but because the desire to give your child the best of everything is so overwhelming and so hard to live up to.
It’s pretty amazing when you think about it really. This is the most important job you will ever have, yet you’ve been given no training, no instruction, probably no real guidance at all. Who thought that was a good idea?
It is this understandable lack of confidence in one’s own parenting skills that drives many new and expecting parents to turn to parenting books, whose pages they reference reflexively like a well worn travel guide to a foreign land. There are some really good parenting books out there that provide much needed guidance, direction and reassurance. But for many parents, these books become a crutch, replacing parents’ most important tool – common sense.
I mention this because the same type of fear, overabundance of information, and over-reliance on third-party information has recently taken hold of a topic close to my heart that I like to call “clean parenting.” Others might call it “green parenting,” but I think that term misses the mark for many parents.
When you think of “green parenting,” you probably imagine trading disposable diapers for cloth and other such environmentally-friendly actions, and kudos to you if you’ve made that decision. But whether or not green parenting is a top priority, many of you are recognizing that wanting the best for your children means protecting them from environmental toxins by foregoing products with harmful chemicals for clean, non-toxic alternatives. Clean Parenting.
As if parents needed one more thing to stress about! And stress-inducing it is, because once you begin to focus on the pervasive toxins in all sorts of children’s products – from bottles to toys to furniture to clothing – you’ve opened a Pandora’s Box that is impossible to close.
Parents are so concerned about all the things they hear and read about environmental toxins that they’ve become overwhelmed to the point of paralysis. The prospect of swapping out everything in their cabinets/bedrooms/playrooms for non-toxic replacements has melted their brains, and inertia replaces action. I call it the curse of information overload, and I always recommend the same course of action…Relax!
I’m the first to beat the drum for non-toxic alternatives to conventional products, but I’m also serious when I suggest that our customers take things one step at a time. Address the easy, less expensive, yet most important areas first – namely bottles, pacifiers, sippy cups. Next, if you can afford to do it, swap out that mattress -- natural and organic versions are easy to find and a good investment, given that your child will be spending a great deal of quality time breathing mere inches from its surface. From there, start replacing the bad with the good when it comes to anything absorbed by your baby’s skin – soaps, shampoos, moisturizers, sunscreens, creams, etc.
Once you’ve got the ball rolling, be more mindful when it comes to items like toys, clothing, furniture and the like. The important thing is to change your mindset and start somewhere.
It’s kind of like that term paper you kept putting off as a student. Just get cracking on the first page, and everything will start falling into place.
