New Father here and caught between two dilemmas!

This might be a long post but bear with me especially new parents, I became a father recently, and I haven't slept properly since, though I'm told that's just the beginning.

But somewhere between the 3am feeds and the fog of new parenthood, I keep thinking about one thing: how on earth do I raise this kid?

I grew up in the 90s. If you did too, you know exactly what that looked like!!

A parenting style built on authority, toughness, and a general belief that children were supposed to be seen and not heard. "Emotions" weren't discussed. Mental health wasn't a conversation. You respected your elders without question, took what you were given, and figured the rest out on your own.

Thats what made us tough? or somehow broken from the inside too.. I'm not saying it was wrong, because our parents did what they knew and how they were raised. The issue wasn't bad intentions, it was a lack of info, awareness, and tools that simply didn't exist at the time. I genuinely don't blame babyboomers or our parents for that. "not the majority"

But I also know I don't want to repeat it.

At the same time, I look at what society is pushing today and I'm not fully buying that either. We've swung so far in the other direction that raising a child now sometimes looks like handing them an iPad at age two and calling it "digital literacy." Every scroll on social media tells you your child needs to be validated for everything, shielded from every discomfort, and given a platform before they can even read. I see kids who can't sit with boredom for five minutes, god we're becoming just as them but even though teenagers who struggle with basic social interaction, and parents who are so afraid of saying "no" that they've stopped saying anything at all. whats that all about?

That's not balance. That's overcorrection with good branding, thats my point of view.

So where does that leave those of us who are genuinely trying to think this through? I don't wanna raise my child the way I was raised. But I also refuse to hand him over to whatever algorithm decides what a "healthy childhood" looks like this week.

What I'm actually after is the middle, and I'm not sure how to find it.

emotionally aware is key without being fragile. Confident without being entitled. Connected to technology without being consumed by it. Rooted in his identity, his faith, and his family, while still being prepared for a world that looks nothing like the one we grew up in.

its a tough job to commit doing if you don't have the patient or strength for it! I'm curious about other new parents, and especially here in Bahrain. When you held your kid for the first time, what did you decide? Are you following the parenting you experienced growing up? Are you going with what society and social media are pushing? Or are you trying to build something in between and if so, how?

Because I think a lot of us are standing in the same place silently, old enough to see the gaps in how we were raised, aware enough to see the traps in what's being sold to us now, and just new enough at this whole thing to still be genuinely lost.