Parenting Right from the Start: An Interview with Maggie Dent

0:00 - Hello, I'm Maggie Dent, and I am here today with the wonderful Dr. Vanessa Lapointe because I wanna talk to you and her about her new book baby, "Parenting Right from the Start." This is a book that I believe the world needs so that we can learn to understand that bringing children into the world isn't just about our children. And, it's an opportunity for us to become better and bigger people than we were before. And so, what I would love to do, I'm going to ask Vanessa a couple of questions so that you can get an idea of why she's gone and invested her heart and her soul and her mind into creating this book that I believe the world needs.

0:40 So, Dr. Vanessa, tell me, what was it that gave you this catalyst that says, "This is my next book"? - It was two things, really. And, one of them comes from a very personal place where I've had an experience of becoming a mother twice over and not having that feel the way that I always thought that it would feel. In fact, I really felt, when I became a mother, that the axis of my entire world had shifted, and I didn't really know what was going on.

1:09 And, keep in mind, I'm a child psychologist. If anybody's gonna know this thing called parenting, I figured I had it, you know, kind of sorted out. As it turned out, I had a lot of growing to do. And so, that was the next of it, was really looking at what is our journey as parents. And, I work as a child psychologist, but, primarily, I work alongside parents rather than their children. And, oftentimes, I have parents coming in of middle school age, their adolescent aged kids talking about the things that are really challenging for them right now, and most times, if I sort of shine the light backwards to early childhood, to the early years for that child, we can usually find what's likely to be the source of the present day challenges.

1:55 And so, when they say the early years last forever, they do. - Yeah, they do. - They last forever, and not that it's unchangeable, but rather that we really create a legacy for our children in the way that we grow them up in the first years of life. And yet, there isn't a manual. - So, that understanding of the identity changing is one of the most powerful ones that comes up in my work a lot, where, women, we're having our babies later, so we have worked out who we are in the context, possibly, of our work or our commitment to some cause.

2:26 And then, we have a little person in our life, and, oh my goodness, that whole context has to change again. So, that sense of emerging new identity, of who am I, beside my child's emerging identity of who are they, is exactly what you explore so beautifully in this book. - [Vanessa] Thank you. - So, I urge you, if you are on the beginning of that journey, you work with families or children, this is the book that you need to get.

2:50 - It really is my belief that, if we really could see the gift that is parenthood, which a huge invitation, a spectacular opportunity, to go inside and grow ourselves up once and for all, that we can acknowledge that there's pieces of us that are going to be triggered, that are going to come flying out of us. We're going to start speaking like our own parents even though we swore we never would. Those are the parts of us that we get to take a look at when we become parents.

3:20 Grow you so that you can grow them. And, if we could so all of that, if we could acknowledge our own need for growth alongside our children's need for guidance in their growth, with all sorts of love and compassion, I really do think, in one generation, we could change the world. - This is a book that will give you hope and compassion, not just for yourselves, but your little ones. - "Parenting Right from the Start."