Are “Experts” writing the wrong kind of parenting books?
Today’s parents are more stressed out than ever before! Many admit they do not enjoy being parents. Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee told viewers on Father’s Day, 2012, that parenting was the hardest thing he had ever done. “Harder,” he said, “than being governor, running for president, or producing my daily radio show and weekly television broadcast.”
How to parent books are more numerous than flowers at a church wedding and most parents have three times more parenting manuals than kids. To wit, Dr. Edward M. Pickens, pediatrician at University Pediatrics in Durham, North Carolina, says “…there are over 70,000 parenting books on discipline alone.” Josette Plank a “Mommy Blogger” from Pennsylvania believes there are at least 3 billion parenting experts, including herself. “Count the strangers who give you free advice while you’re waiting in the line at the grocery store, post office or bank”, and Josette thinks there are at least five billion experts, most of whom have written books. Parenting sites cover the web, and every “expert” in American, Canada, and the United Kingdom has a parenting blog.
John Stossel, had an hour long program on Fox News, November 22, 2014, and re-ran it the following night. He interviewed several parenting experts from Lenore Skenazy of “Free Range Kids” blog to “Tiger Mom” Amy Chua. They all had different ideas on how to parent.
Yet, In spite of all this advice, we see evidence every day that parenting is not working. Let’s look at the results of our current methods of parenting.
According to the Children’s Defense Organization, every day in these great United States, 4,028 children are arrested, 408 of them for drug crimes, 187 for violent crimes; 5 children or teens commit suicide, 7 are murdered, and 24 children or teens die from accidents; 1,837 children are confirmed as abused or neglected, and every school day 16,244 public school students are suspended, and 2,857 high school students drop out.
And just in case you still doubt the need for a change in parenting, know that every day 847 babies are born to teen mothers, and four in 10 sexually active females between the ages of 14 and 19 have at least one STD. Sorry for the horrible statistics, I did not invent them.
What’s going on? Parents want to do a great job! Experts want to help. What’s wrong? Could it be we are looking at parenting all wrong?
I believe we are! I think most of today’s parenting books are concentrating on the wrong concepts. Not that there giving bad advice, but they need a new perspective. They are concentrating on the child when parenting is really about the parent.
I’ll tell you in the next two posts what I think that and what we can do about it!