These Are the Practical Parenting Tips and Advice I Learned From My Parents

The goal of almost every parent is to raise a well-rounded child who will eventually grow into a happy, productive, and successful adult; and as any experienced parent will tell you, even on the best of days, the road to that goal can be a long and bumpy obstacle course complete with its own unforeseen hazards and challenges, that will leave the parental path to their child's adulthood littered with a plethora of discarded parenting advice and how-to manuals.

As parents we start out knowing that in order to be a successful, it is absolutely mandatory that they obtain a traditional education in the three r’s, (Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic), but it takes more than academics if they are to become a well-rounded adult, but living in the age of the super information highway, where the sheer volume of conflicting information and advice that is available can be intimidating, coupled with society’s total media immersion, can make it downright difficult to figure out a course of action that will best prepare them for the life challenges that they must face in their journey toward adulthood.

When I was expecting my first child, and in the very beginning of my tour of parental duty, I was determined, “To not make the same mistakes with my children that my parents made with me.” And to that end, I read everything about parenting and discipline that I could get my hands on; I spent my entire maternity leave watching Dr. T. Berry Brazleton, and other like PBS parenting shows available at the time. I armed myself with reports, and mountains of statistics, and I listened and read obsessively on any and every new parenting theory or plan that hit the morning news show or afternoon talk show circuit. I was determined to be a great mom.

The Turning Point

My husband made his first deployment post having children in May of 1996, three days after our son turned two and two months before our daughter’s first birthday, and that is where the fun really began.

My son had been an easy baby, sleeping through the night at a week old, he had a happy go-lucky personality, would go to anyone who would hold him, and his eager to please disposition left him eager to help in whatever little ways that a toddler that young was able to; if I said to him, “please pick up your toys and put them back in the toy box,” he usually would do just that, he went to bed at night without so much as a fight, and he rarely, if ever threw a tantrum, right up until his second birthday.

It was the morning of his second birthday, and having fed both my babies, and gotten through the usual list of morning chores, I was beginning to prepare for the birthday party we were hosting for him that afternoon. My son was busy playing with his toys on our patio, while I was gathering up his sister, and the diaper bag, and my list of items that I still needed for the party as I prepared for a last minute dash to the grocery store before heading over to the park where we were holding his party.

Completely unaware that I was about to experience what I would later look back at and recognize as one of those little defining moments, I was feeling pretty pleased with myself for having things so well organized, and was patting myself on the back for how well behaved the kids were, and how smoothly things were running, when I picked up my eight month old daughter and buckling her into the car seat said to my son, “Okay buddy it’s time to pick up your toys so we can go bye-bye.”

To which my previously mild-mannered and sweet natured little boy responded by balling up his fists, throwing back his head, and letting out a blood curdling shriek, that I swear shook the glass on our patio door, and set off at least one car alarm,  then proceeded to throw himself on the ground and throw a tantrum that lasted for nearly an hour, left us both exhausted, undid all of my well thought out plans for the day, and made us forty-five minutes late for his birthday party…..my baby had entered the terrible twos, and life as I knew it was about to change forever.

In the next few weeks, as both my kids and I struggled to make the adjustment from being a two parent household, to being the two parent household of an active duty deployment, I clung tightly to my nearly three years worth of acquired parenting information, statistics, and data, stubbornly refusing to even hear the advice that my father, step-mother, and grandparents were so willing to offer, if it conflicted with any of my ideals. 

I cannot now recall exactly when or what it was that was the catalyst, but by the end of my husband’s seven month deployment I had had an epiphany of a sort, and although there are still differences in the way that I parent my children, at some point that year, I had begun to have trouble recalling exactly what all those, "mistakes they had made with me," I had been trying to avoid were, in fact, I began to wonder, when and how they had grown so wise, so quickly!