Parenting: "By the Book" or Not So Much (by Diane Gallagher)

Guest blogger Wednesday : )

Have you ever been wandering through a bookstore and realized how many books have been published about parenting?   It's a hot market!  It makes sense because every new parent wants the key to raising a happy, healthy and holy child.  We hope and pray that the answer will be in that book.  As an avid book reader and a frustrated perfectionist, sometimes I feel that I have read more books than I should have. Often, I have been inspired ( Lisa Whelchel’s Creative Correction). Occasionally, I have been challenged.  But most often, the parenting books I read foster guilt or confusion:  guilt because of all the things I am not doing or should be doing differently; confusion because they offer conflicting advice.  Try reading Dr. Dobson’s Dare to Discipline next to William Sear’s Baby Book and Tracy Hoag’s The Baby Whisperer ( I'm sure I'vejust dated myself….these were the popular parenting books when I was first having babies. There are certainly new books filling the shelves of the parenting section today). 

Where is the truth?  Which one is right?   Should I let my baby cry it out or respond to his every whimper.  Should I spank or only use timeouts?  Should I nurse on demand or follow a set nursing schedule?   Circumcisions?  Immunizations? Home schooling?  Working Mom or Stay at home?  All sides offer loads of data, examples and psychological analysis to defend their stance.  What is a new, vulnerable parent to do?  Feel guilty and confused, that’s what.  Motherhood is hard enough in and of itself without the self-inflicted emotional torture we can put ourselves through.  The best piece of advice,( that I did not learn from a book, I might add), is to be myself.  Not the Mother I think I should be or that Dr. Dobson is encouraging me to be or that my friends are doing differently.  Just plain little old me.  Over the last 12 years of parenting, I've come to know myself better as a mother.  Amy Grant’s song “All I Ever Have to be is what you Made Me” has such a perfect message for all ages.  God has created me (and my husband) with unique personalities.  A parenting technique or choice that might be “spot on” for one couple might feel uncomfortable and wrong for another.  I have finally learned that I do not need to feel guilty because we stopped home schooling and enrolled our children at the nearby Catholic school or that I left my 11 month old baby with my in-laws while my husband and I traveled to Rome for my brother’s diaconate. 

These were choices that some of my friends (and some of the authors I mentioned) would not have made.  I am finally learning that all I truly do have to be is the mother God made me.  I no longer read many parenting books.  I have had enough of books telling me who I should be.  My Creator is the One who truly knows who I am and that is where I should be looking.  He has made me …with all of my strengths and weaknesses… and I need to trust that while He has not made me perfect, He has made me the perfect mother for my children.

Live It: The next time you feel either unsure, undecided, or inadequate as a parent, say a prayer or read Scripture instead of a book to find guidance and peace.