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 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 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 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 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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