Parenting Mysteries: Are There Parenting Experts?

When you are expecting a baby, you are undoubtedly reading up on as much parenting information as you can possibly find. Visit any bookstore, and you will find entire sections of the store devoted to parenting advice, how-to's, and general tips. If you have ever accompanied a friend to this section of the bookstore, you may have noticed that her or his eyes began glazing over rather quickly. Perhaps it was you in need of the parenting advice book, and you find yourself overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of the information that is out there.

When you bring home a new little baby from the hospital, you will rather quickly notice that half the questions that suddenly crop up were not covered by the parenting book. In addition to the foregoing, you are beginning to wonder about the wisdom of some of these parenting experts who committed their knowledge to paper for posterity - did they really know what they were writing about, or is your baby just the one exception to whom none of their work applies?

The reality will hit you when you have a second child: there are no parenting experts! There is not one authority living or dead who will be a parenting expert on your child. Each child is unique in every way, and what will work without fail for one child, will not work for a million others. Add to this the fact that quite a few of the parenting experts never actually had a child of their own, and you will quickly realize why each parenting book should be read with a grain of salt, and taken as a book of suggestions, not expert advice.

So do not attempt to parent your baby in a way that is akin to stuffing a square peg into a round hole! Do not seek to adapt your child to the expert's view on parenting, but instead adapt the so called expert's suggestions to fit the needs of your child. This will go a long ways to ensuring that your child will blossom and rejoice in her or his individuality, style, and overall temperament. It will also mean that you will enjoy raising your child for who she or he is, not getting frustrated at the notion of molding her or him into someone else's image. Give it a try and see if parenting is not suddenly becoming a lot easier, and things appear to fall into place! You might be surprised.