100,000 Hours
by Elizabeth Pantley author of The No-Cry Discipline Solution (McGraw-Hill 2007)
From the time your baby is born until the time your child leaves home for college or wherever the future leads, the two of you may have over 100,000 hours to interact and connect. It would be absolutely, utterly impossible for all of those 100,000 hours to be blissfully happy and precisely choreographed. There will be plenty of rough spots, uncalled-for anger, and mistakes – both on your part and your child’s. To even attempt perfection would be ludicrous and stress invoking, yet most of us parents criticize ourselves unnecessarily over every negative situation.
Raising a child requires that we make many decisions every single day, from the insignificant to the life-altering. Sometimes it is obvious that you have made the right decision, other times it is unclear, and from time to time it’s apparent that you have made a mistake. Nearly every mistake that you make as a parent has been made by a multitude of parents in history. Small mistakes are unavoidable in parenting, and they rarely leave a lifelong impact. They are just human beings living everyday life.
The big picture is more important than any one action.
What is more important than any single decision or action is your overall philosophy and approach to raising your child. When love is your foundation, parenting skills are your structure, and your goal is to raise your child to be a good human being, with whom you can have a pleasant lifelong relationship, then it is likely things will turn out as you hope.
What really matters?
What matters most to you in the long run? Take some time to contemplate your most important goals for your children and for your family. Determine which values you will use to guide your decisions towards your goals. Make an effort to learn good parenting skills and use them on a daily basis. And then, take a deep breath and forgive yourself and your children for the mistakes that inevitably will happen along the way.
Excerpted with permission by McGraw-Hill Publishing from The No-Cry Discipline Solution (McGraw-Hill 2007) by Elizabeth Pantley http://www.pantley.com/elizabeth
About the author:
Elizabeth Pantley is the author of several books, including Gentle Baby Care : No-cry, No-fuss, No-worry — Essential Tips for Raising Your Baby, The No-Cry Sleep Solution: Gentle Ways to Help Your Baby Sleep Through the Night, Kid Cooperation (with an introduction by William Sears, MD), Perfect Parenting, as well as her latest The No-Cry Sleep Solution for Toddlers and Preschoolers and is also president of Better Beginnings, Inc. She is a popular speaker on family issues, and her newsletter, Parent Tips, is seen in schools nationwide. She appears as a regular radio show guest, and has been quoted in Parents, Parenting, Redbook, Good Housekeeping, American Baby, Working Mother, and Woman’s Day magazines. Visit Elizabeth’s web site http://www.pantley.com/elizabeth.
Read More
Comment on this article...