The Best Parenting Books: Mentoring Versus Expert Parenting Advice |
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I started reading parenting books forty-one years ago. That's how long I've been parenting. But just this year I "retired" from my position of actively parenting minor children. My youngest (of thirteen) just turned eighteen. In the beginning, I was reading parenting books to learn how to become the best mother I could be, and to learn how to eliminate the temper tantrums of my first child. I didn't find any tantrum-elimination solutions in any of the parenting books I read, however-or in any of the parenting seminars I attended either.
 I figured out by myself what techniques worked to eliminate temper tantrums when my fifth baby was fourteen months old. (All of my children had thrown tantrums up to that point in time.) Once I had discovered what needed to be changed in my parenting techniques with my fifth baby, I applied the same and additional techniques with my last eight children from the time they were born, and I totally prevented temper tantrums in them. Also, I discovered through this process that all of the parenting books I had previously read had steered me wrong in dealing with temper tantrums. Parenting books that advised about temper tantrums typically described them as inevitable and unpreventable, and usually told parents to ignore them. Besides learning, with child number five, that temper tantrums are totally preventable, I learned that ignoring tantrums ensures they will recur. From my experience, I also learned not to automatically trust parenting advice from "experts." I learned to assess what they had to say about parenting children before I accepted it. And I recognized that I had discovered what they had not. I came to see that as people set themselves up to be the "experts" in helping relationships, there is the accompanying connotation that they are the wise, functional, educated, and healthy ones, and their advisees are unwise, dysfunctional, uneducated, and unhealthy ones. This is another reason I don't like the use of the term, "expert." I prefer to use the term, mentor, which can be defined as a wise and trusted person who teaches or advises. This definition implies that this trust is earned and the wisdom is valid. It does not imply that the advisee is unwise. It's taken me thirty-three years to prepare for (partially by getting a bachelor's degree in psychology and women's studies) and to write about my temper tantrum prevention and elimination techniques in my first parenting book. This is the parenting book I wish I could have read forty-one years ago, starting out as a parent. But it's only now been written. About the Author: Frank Cole Parenting books are not all created equal. Go to www.megamomswisdom.com to find great help on parenting children , including "MegaMom's Wisdom for Tantrums: The Tantrum Book to End All Tantrums. |
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