Parenting books..many of us have read them.. we do it as we
feel it will make us better parents, more informed, educated parents who have a
tool bag of techniques for any situation. If you haven't read the books you may
have seen posts or blogs being shared on Facebook from different gentle
parenting site. How to really connect with your child, how to stay calm and
"with" your child whilst they are practically verbally or physically
abusing you.
I have a book case of books, there are two which really have
helped me get the basics in place and I still attempt to implement their
techniques when I'm usually losing the will to live. However, the majority are
just bollocks (excuse my language). If I just had one of my children, either
one, I could perhaps make some of the techniques work but when you have one
child kicking off, due to nobbly socks, whilst the other is kicking off about
something else it's just near on impossible to implement. The funniest book was
about dealing with fighting siblings. "empathise with the victim and
ignore the hitter".. err.yeah that's great until you have two boys
scrapping and hitting each other! Who's the bloody victim? Who started it? Oh and don't get me started on the fact you have
to actually leave the house for school or pre-school. None of these books seem
to give you a quick two minute method of sorting out the problem, leaving the
house, getting in the car with all children and dog to get to school in 5
minutes!
Then you have the books about parenting without conditions
or without rewards and punishments. I do understand and agree with the theory
behind it and you would never see so much as reward chart in my house (apart
from the one a dietitian recently gave me for Harrison). So you read the books,
you unconditionally raise your child for the first few years of their life, you
feel you are doing a fairly good job and staying away from bribery and time
outs. Well guess what? I hate to break it to you but this will last only until
they end up going to pre-school or school. These establishments love stars,
smilies, time outs "thinking" time,, the list is endless. It's like
Super nanny moved in! Many parents love these methods so be prepared to feel
like a total wierdo that no one really understands. Trust me, I've tried
changing the methods used by emailing research against such techniques but it
was a losing battle so I now simply bury my head in the sand and try and let my
children know that it's actually OK not to get a smilie for this or that and
actually, kind words can mean so much more. So unless you home school or live
in a commune don't expect to be able to continue this unconditional way of life
for your child.
Now I appreciate this blog may come across negative and many people have found books and blogs helpful. Maybe I have aswell but don't recognise it. Had I not read the books maybe I would be finding parenting even harder than I already do. Maybe I would now be on a plane far far away... who knows? What I do know is parents should not become obsessed with books and feel like a failure if the techniques don't work. Remember you are human and the world is not standing still for you to implement everything you have read. This is the real world...
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