There are a plethora of easy top ten lists to be made from parenthood. And I do love a good list! On my top ten list of dislikes are parenting books. I'd almost forgotten how very much I dislike them but for some reason I recently started trying to read "Kids Are Worth It" by Barbara Coloroso. And I was immediately reminded of my dislike. For one thing much of the advice in parenting books is oblique. Example -toddler has fit every time you try to get them dressed. Solution? - give toddler some control and choice. Offer toddler the green shirt and the blue shirt. And like magic toddler will feel happy and satisfied that they have control, choose a shirt and willingly gets dressed. Ta da! I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who had a toddler that stomped on both shirts and continued whining. So, smarty pants book, what do I do now? Usually the advice stops there.
I could go on at length about my beefs with Ms. Coloroso. I mean her heart is in the right place and she makes some good points; her theory is that kids need to suffer the natural consequences of their actions and there by learn how to regulate their own behaviour ("the gift of inner discipline"). I don't necessarily disagree but I don't want to be made to feel guilty about giving my kid a time-out. It's not always possible to get to the true root of misbehaviour and dammit, sometimes you just do it because I bloody well said so. And a good deal of her advice relates to teenagers. I can see it's just common sense that if a kid dents the folks' car he should be made to pay for the damage etc. etc. But that doesn't help me much with my kids as they are excellent drivers and our van already has some many damn dents, who cares?
But I wanted to like parenting books, I really did. Pretty much the first thing I did when I found out I was pregnant with Gabey(right after I cried and laughed and tried for 1 whole day not to spill the beans to my Mum) was buy good old "What to Expect When You're Expecting" WTEWYE gets a fair amount of flak and some of it's deserved but overall I found it pretty handy. I read a few other books while pregnant including the super scary "Birth Partner - Everything You Need to Know to Help a Woman Through Childbirth". OMG, that book contains a description of how a c-section works that is seared into my memory. Jono also read "Birth Partner" and it turned him in to the biggest nerd in our pre-natal class. I had to beg him to put his hand down as he was making the other guys (and, frankly, the pregnant ladies) look bad. But I digress. In sum, pregnancy books were overall pretty useful.
But then I came home with the babe and those helpful books became a source of heartache and frustration. There's a reason why the average baby book is about 14 times longer than the average pregnancy book. That would be because there is no average baby. I made myself crazy reading books, trying "solutions" and then weeping when they didn't work out as advertised. Why why why didn't they work? With time I eventually learned that by the time you've gone mental trying to solve a given issue, your delightful baby will have very likely gotten over that particular problem and has moved on to something else. But in the moment, with my first baby I felt for sure I had some sort of weird infant and that all other mothers were blissfully reading books, following the suggestions and having great success ('cause otherwise why are there so many baby books?). I did of course find out that wasn't true but it was hard for me to get past the belief that the solution for my problems lay in a book. And there's always one mama who's a big reader and is trying all the "expert" recommended tricks and having great success (or so she says...). But fortunately there are more mamas who tell is like it is. After diligently reading and trying "The No Cry Sleep Solution" one of my baby group mamas referred to it as the "No Sleep Cry Solution". Guess that one didn't quite work out as advertised...
So I eventually let the parenting books go. I have a couple around that I haul out occasionally for factual reference (I can never remember what temperature constitutes a fever). But until I tried reading "Kids Are Worth It" last week I hadn't read a parenting book in years. And now I can thank Ms. Coloroso for reminding me why. Now, where did I put that box of stuff that's heading to Value Village...
