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 to not trust expert parenting advice automatically, without first assessing it, or testing it out. I realized right away after discovering the secret to eliminating temper tantrums with my fifth child, that I had learned something the "experts" hadn't.
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 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-four years ago, starting out as a parent. But it's only now been written.
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 to not trust expert parenting advice automatically, without first assessing it, or testing it out. I realized right away after discovering the secret to eliminating temper tantrums with my fifth child, that I had learned something the "experts" hadn't.
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 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-four years ago, starting out as a parent. But it's only now been written.
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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