Through the four years, four months and 22 days that we have been parents we have done it OUR WAY but we have also received many parenting ideas from various places.
Geordie is four weeks old We tend to stay away from books; we find that they all contradict each other. We kept with the Dr Sears book when needed, mainly for their 'liquor cabinet', or was that 'medicine cabinet'. Another reason is (it seems) at the beginning of every second sentence they write that "all children are different". It made you not feel bad if your child was not doing what THE BOOK tells you they should be doing.
B.G. (before Geordie) I was an early childhood music educator at a Montessori school (still can't spell Montessori though, can never remember if it's 2 - s's or 2 - r's). So I have some child psych courses under my belt and experience...as an educator which is, let me tell you, not the same as experience as a parent!!
Our biggest help, we find, is learning from other peoples parenting mistakes. Come on...you know you do it!!!! Goodness, you can even do it with a family you see for five minutes. You see the parents doing something, realize that it's not working and file it away as 'parenting I will not be using'.
Truth is, we have a family that we get a lot of our "don't parenting" from. It's sad to say, but it's true. Sometimes it's not even that they have parented 'wrong' it's just SO NOT US!!
For the most part Callum and I try to stay on the same page (kind of). Try and not overly criticize each other (well, I try...Callum's pretty good at just NOT doing it). We also feel that living away from all family helped us to be confident in our parenting. No one to tell us what to do or how they did it! It also means that we are stuck, alone, together, doing it by ourselves!!
Do we have the perfect child? YES!!! ...for us!!!!
Here's hoping that we aren't someone else's "don't parenting family"!!!!
Do you have a "don't parenting family"?
Better yet, do you think that you ARE a "don't parenting family"?
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3 comments:
hahahaha
I totally have a few "don't families" HAHA ... wait does that make me a parenting snob?
For real, I liked Dr Sears, but we flew in our own flock too, taking what we felt comfortable with and tossing the rest.
I get a lot of advise about not allowing my children to get too attached .... it annoys me but, I know my kids are wicked awesome because they are attached!
It's funny about half of my family I would say is the "don't" and the other half is pretty similar to what we do. And then there are the mixes. Such as, there are things that some of the don'ts do that we do and there are things that the dos do that we would never do!
I'm very conscious of not telling my friends or other parents how to do things. I make a point of saying, "What works for me or for us is..." rather than "You should try...."
This is so funny and so true - I've been know to do that - file it away - HA!
Take care - Kellan
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