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.
With my fifth child, when he was fourteen months old, I learned on my own how to eliminate his temper tantrums. (All of my babies had had been temper tantrum throwers up to that point in my parenting.) After I had learned what I needed to improve in my parenting style with my fifth child, I replicated and improved upon the techniques with my last eight babies as they were born, and totally prevented tantrums with all of them. Through this process of learning how to prevent temper tantrums, I also learned how the parenting books I'd been reading had steered me wrong in dealing with tantrums. They'd all been teaching the inevitability of temper tantrums, that all children have them, and that the best thing to do about tantrums was to ignore them. In addition to learning, with my fifth child, that it is entirely possible to eliminate and prevent temper tantrums, I also learned that ignoring tantrums was part of the cause of them.
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 also came to appreciate that as people set themselves up as "experts" in a helping relationship, it includes a connotation that they are the ones who are functional, educated, wise, and healthy-and that the people they advise are dysfunctional, uneducated, unwise, and unhealthy. This is one more reason I don't like using the title "expert." I much prefer to view myself as a mentor (or a wise and trusted teacher or advisor). This implies that the wisdom is valid and the trust is earned, and does not imply that recipients of the mentoring are 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.
With my fifth child, when he was fourteen months old, I learned on my own how to eliminate his temper tantrums. (All of my babies had had been temper tantrum throwers up to that point in my parenting.) After I had learned what I needed to improve in my parenting style with my fifth child, I replicated and improved upon the techniques with my last eight babies as they were born, and totally prevented tantrums with all of them. Through this process of learning how to prevent temper tantrums, I also learned how the parenting books I'd been reading had steered me wrong in dealing with tantrums. They'd all been teaching the inevitability of temper tantrums, that all children have them, and that the best thing to do about tantrums was to ignore them. In addition to learning, with my fifth child, that it is entirely possible to eliminate and prevent temper tantrums, I also learned that ignoring tantrums was part of the cause of them.
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 also came to appreciate that as people set themselves up as "experts" in a helping relationship, it includes a connotation that they are the ones who are functional, educated, wise, and healthy-and that the people they advise are dysfunctional, uneducated, unwise, and unhealthy. This is one more reason I don't like using the title "expert." I much prefer to view myself as a mentor (or a wise and trusted teacher or advisor). This implies that the wisdom is valid and the trust is earned, and does not imply that recipients of the mentoring are 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:
Learn more about parenting books. Stop by Leanna Rae Scott's site where you can find out all about parenting book options and what they can do for you.
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