As someone who has written three books and numerous articles on the subject of parenting, I know that I (and many other parenting book authors and bloggers) write with the intention of inspiring, encouraging, and empowering parents. Yet I also know that the Internet and bookstores are filled with conflicting advice and opinions on child rearing, and sometimes what is intended to be empowering actually feels condemning. What is meant to be encouraging may be discouraging. What is written to be inspiring ultimately may leave you feeling confused, anxious, guilty, or just plain angry. It’s so hard to know which voices to listen to in a sea filled with endless voices.
The best piece of advice I can give to my readers is the advice I had to learn to take myself: in the end, the voice you need to listen to is your own. Not the reactive, knee-jerk voice or the critical voice you carried with you from childhood, but the quiet, calm inner stirring that you’re sometimes afraid to listen to because it’s starkly different from all the other voices surrounding you. That quiet, calm, peaceful inner voice whispers love and connection because that is what we are designed for.
Parenting is a long, tough game, and whether you’re at the top of the first or the bottom of the ninth, you’re playing your heart out because you know it’s all on the line. You want to make all the right choices, so you read countless pages and weigh the science and consult your trusted friends, and you do the best you can. Then, you read something that goes directly against the decision you just agonizingly made and you start questioning yourself all over again. It’s exhausting, I know, to have a constant stream of “you should do this” and “you’d better not do that” messages thrown at you every day.
The further along I get in this game, the more I’m convinced that there is no right way to play for every team but that there is a best way for each individual, unique team. We can all have different playbooks and still play really well, but there is one single quality every team must have to succeed – unity.
…Continue reading at Creative Child Magazine
