Parenting by Instinct

This was the "Quote of the Day" on the Excite.com homepage today:

The more people have studied different methods of bringing up children the more they have come to the conclusion that what good mothers and fathers instinctively feel like doing for their babies is best after all.
- -- Benjamin Spock

And I have to say I agree with Dr. Spock here (some other parts of his book leave a little to be desired). Especially when my girls were infants, trusting my maternal instincts always proved to be the best path and it's one of the things I appreciate the most about Attachment Parenting. Now that they are toddlers, it's not always easy to remember to trust my instincts - sometimes I feel like another parent has taken over. I see myself responding to my children in ways that my parents responded to me and I don't like it. I know we all are destined to become our parents in some ways, but I'm hoping to avoid the emotionally distant dysfunctional part of my parent's legacy. So now I'm finding that always going with my first instinct isn't enough. Now I have to analyze my reactions: is it *really* what my gut is telling me to do? Or is it simply something that feels right because it is familiar, i.e., how I was raised?

Last night I cried myself to sleep (PMS much?). I kept thinking about the stories I heard of children being ripped out of their mother's arms during the tsunami in south Asia, the stories of children crushed to death in the earthquake in Pakistan, etc. It's so hard to see and hear about those images as a parent. I found myself hoping and praying nothing bad will ever happen to my children, but also I know that those other parents hoped and prayed the same thing. God didn't love them any less and yet allowed them to experience unspeakable heartache. And then I realized that trust in God means we believe that even when death happens it will turn out for good. It's a hard concept to really take to heart. But if God loves us, then He will always give us what is for our good, even if we can't see the whole story from our perspective. I'm still asking him to protect my girls, of course - and I have faith that no matter what happens from the perspective of the world, He will. God kind of parents by instinct, too. "Or what man of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone?" Matthew 7:9.