Thoughts on parenting books

You can read lots of parenting books, and some of them will even have good

advice. The risk though is that you'll stop trusting your instinct, rigidly

apply principles that make a lot of sense as part of a Theory of Parenting, but

might not really be appropriate in the situation you're in.

Trust your instincts. Believe in time-honored parenting practices (and by that I mean, go back tens of thousands of years). Not much has

changed for us as a species since we lived in caves. You don't necessarily need

to follow the latest parenting fad.

There is no guarantee that following the precepts of some parenting book will

yield the results you expect. Parenting is messy, it's emergent. There are

constantly things that will get in the way of a perfectly designed parenting

trajectory, and you have to constantly adjust course, improvise, be flexible.

The world will interact more and more with your child, and the quicker you get

rid of the illusion that your child is your design project, the better.

Let go, trust, do your best, follow your gut instinct. You and your child will

be good.