I:0:T I began reading parenting books about forty-four years ago. Wow! I really have been parenting that long. Just recently I "retired" from actively parenting minor children. My youngest of thirteen just turned twenty-one. In the very beginning, I started reading parenting books because I wanted to learn all about becoming the best mother I could be, and also because my first child threw temper tantrums that I wanted to learn how to eliminate. Yet I didn't find any tantrum-elimination techniques taught in any of the parenting books I read. And I didn't find these techniques taught in any of the parenting seminars I went to, 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 been thirty-three years in the preparation (partly with getting a bachelor's degree in psychology and women's studies) and in the writing of my first parenting book, which shares what I learned about preventing and eliminating temper tantrums. This book has the kind of information I wish I could have read forty-four years ago, at the beginning of my parenting career. But it's only just now been made available.
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 been thirty-three years in the preparation (partly with getting a bachelor's degree in psychology and women's studies) and in the writing of my first parenting book, which shares what I learned about preventing and eliminating temper tantrums. This book has the kind of information I wish I could have read forty-four years ago, at the beginning of my parenting career. But it's only just now been made available.
About the Author:
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