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.
I learned by myself how to eliminate tantrums when my fifth child was fourteen months old. (Each of my babies had been tantrum throwers up to that point.) After I figured out what I needed to change in my parenting style with my fifth baby, I used the same techniques with my last eight children from the time they were each born, and it totally prevented temper tantrums in all of them. I also learned, through my experience with preventing tantrums, that the parenting books I had read up to that point had mostly steered me wrong. They had been telling me temper tantrums are unpreventable and inevitable and to simply ignore them. On top of learning (with my fifth child) that it is entirely possible to eliminate temper tantrums, I learned that ignoring tantrums had been part of the cause of them with my first five children.
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 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'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.
I learned by myself how to eliminate tantrums when my fifth child was fourteen months old. (Each of my babies had been tantrum throwers up to that point.) After I figured out what I needed to change in my parenting style with my fifth baby, I used the same techniques with my last eight children from the time they were each born, and it totally prevented temper tantrums in all of them. I also learned, through my experience with preventing tantrums, that the parenting books I had read up to that point had mostly steered me wrong. They had been telling me temper tantrums are unpreventable and inevitable and to simply ignore them. On top of learning (with my fifth child) that it is entirely possible to eliminate temper tantrums, I learned that ignoring tantrums had been part of the cause of them with my first five children.
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 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'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.
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