Peps
Ariel and I went to a PEPS orientation last night. For those of you unfamiliar, PEPS is a parenting group where you get together with other new parents (and their children) to talk about the process and challenges, share advice, and talk over what is happening in the first few months of your baby’s life. Even just the orientation felt reassuring. There were a couple people already with babies there (who were all remarkably quiet) and it was nice to have other people to talk to where that was the only reason to be there. I don’t want to be one of those parents who can only talk about their kids. I know how irritating that is from the other side. At the same time though, it’s the biggest thing happening in your life and you need to talk about it. My friends Ben and Joriel did PEPS last year and found it really useful. Sounds like sometimes people create longer term support networks out of it, and other times they only need it for the first few months. I think I’ll be happy to have it either way.
I’ve also signed up for a child safety and newborn care class at Swedish. It’s a little odd signing up for parenting classes. Sometimes I catch a look at myself in the proverbial mirror and am a little shocked. I’m taking parenting classes? Weird. Life just never stops evolving in new and strange ways.
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October 30th, 2009 at 11:58 pm
We did PEPS too, and it was great. Our group still meets every other week, and the kids are now three and a half! At first, in the newborn stage, the support and information aspect is crucial. Later, the social aspect (for the parents and the kids) comes more to the forefront.
Some other benefits you didn’t mention:
– having a group of kids the exact same age gives you some good benchmarks to know what the range of normal is.
– free babysitting swaps! If you’re like us and get it going early, your kid can grow up being used to these other people caring for him. We even do overnight babysitting with one couple in our PEPS group.