Our Young Parent's Experience

Toughest moments

1. Our toughest moment was going through the parenting assessment process. It wasn’t enjoyable at all, we thought that social service workers believed that we were going to be bad parents, like our parents were. They didn’t say this outright but they would bring up your parents mistakes as if you were going to make the same ones. We were always worried that we’d get the questions wrong. Most of the time we were worried that we’d have our children taken away. We always started off in the negative rather than the positive, we’d have preferred it if it was the other way around. Where workers worked from the positive rather than the negative, for example with the assumption that we were going to be good parents rather than bad parents, where being a care leaver wasn’t the only reason for an assessment. We wanted to be treated more like individuals who were going to love and take care of our children.  There were some workers during the process that we did learn to trust, we think the Family Nurse Partnership scheme is really good and in some cases our Young Person’s Advisors were the best. We got through these tough times, and proved that we are good parents. If you are going through it, just do your best, put your child first, make use of the support around you and you’ll be fine.
2. I personally felt overwhelmed as a first time mum, I had really bad postnatal depression. It was such a traumatic time, I was either crying a lot or got really angry often. If you ever feel like this, reach out for help, don’t just hope it will pass. I would suggest visiting your GP to get support, I eventually did and was diagnosed with postnatal depression, they offered help which was a great relief. If you’re worried that they’ll just think you’re not a good parent because of your moods, that’s understandable but it’s always better for your child if you get help.

Our beautiful moments

• Getting to hold my little one after birth
• Watching them grow and develop
• Compliments on my child’s manners and intelligence
• Hearing “thank you mummy”
• Skin to skin contact
• Breastfeeding and having them look up at you

Our funny moments

• My child convincing me my only name is ‘mummy’
• Too many moments, my son is hilarious
• My child calling me ‘babe’, because my partner does
• Bath time is funny, she can just sit there and then go crazy
• Blowing raspberries at me if she doesn’t like her food.
• Once he tried to be independent and he used the shower gel to wash his hair and got it in his eyes, he started shouting “my eyes aren’t working”
• Seeing Sudocreme smeared on the walls, and then seeing he’s covered head to toe in it.

Our Top 10 tips for young parents who care leavers

1. Don’t be afraid to shop second-hand, make your money stretch
2. Don’t fall for all the expensive stuff sometimes the cheaper versions are just as good
3. Make use of the support around you, don’t be afraid to trust professionals
4. It’s ok to let someone else keep the little one for an hour whilst you rest
5. Make time for yourself, take a walk, have a warm bath
6. When you are disciplining your little one, get down to their level and speak to them
7. Don’t be afraid of potty training
8. Give rewards, treats are important for reinforcing positive behaviour
9. Everyone contributing to raising your child needs to be on the same page about what they need and how to provide it as well as disciplining them
10. Do your research before ruling out breastfeeding