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 realize that when people present themselves as "experts" in helping relationships, they also present the connotation that they are the healthy, wise, functional, and educated ones, while the recipients of their help are the unhealthy, unwise, dysfunctional, and uneducated ones. This is a very good reason to not like the term, "expert," in my opinion. I prefer to view myself as a mentor, meaning a wise, trusted advisor or teacher. This definition has the connotation that the trust is earned and that the wisdom is valid. It does not have the connotation that mentoring recipients are 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.
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 realize that when people present themselves as "experts" in helping relationships, they also present the connotation that they are the healthy, wise, functional, and educated ones, while the recipients of their help are the unhealthy, unwise, dysfunctional, and uneducated ones. This is a very good reason to not like the term, "expert," in my opinion. I prefer to view myself as a mentor, meaning a wise, trusted advisor or teacher. This definition has the connotation that the trust is earned and that the wisdom is valid. It does not have the connotation that mentoring recipients are 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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