07:45:00
I started accessing and reading parenting books forty-four years ago. Yes, I have been parenting for that long. Only recently did I "retire" from my active-parenting-of-minor-children position as my youngest of thirteen children turned twenty-one. At the beginning, I started reading parenting books so I could learn how to become the best mom I could possibly be, and also to find out how to eliminate my oldest child's temper tantrums. But I didn't get any tantrum-elimination information from any parenting book I ever read-or from any parenting seminar that I ever attended.
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.
I learned that I shouldn't trust expert parenting advice without first testing or assessing it. I realized that I had been able to learn valuable techniques that the "experts" hadn't.
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 took thirty-three years to prepare for, partially by earning a bachelor's degree in women's studies and psychology, and to write what I learned about temper tantrum prevention and elimination as my first parenting book. This is the kind of parenting book I needed to read more than forty-four years ago. But it's only just now 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.
I learned that I shouldn't trust expert parenting advice without first testing or assessing it. I realized that I had been able to learn valuable techniques that the "experts" hadn't.
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 took thirty-three years to prepare for, partially by earning a bachelor's degree in women's studies and psychology, and to write what I learned about temper tantrum prevention and elimination as my first parenting book. This is the kind of parenting book I needed to read more than forty-four years ago. But it's only just now available.
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