I don’t read parenting books. And, at the risk of offending many readers, I don’t recommend reading parenting books. I’m fully aware of the irony of me – a mom writing about raising kids – telling people not to read about parenting. Hopefully by now, though, you’ve figured out that I’m the antithesis of an expert on anything. In fact, my blog is likely a how-not-to-parent treatise.
Here’s how I came to my Screw-the-Experts Theory of Parenting.
Six years ago, my international teaching career was going strong, and I was used to being extremely competent at what I did. If I didn’t know it, I googled it, I read professional journals, I eavesdropped on teaching forums, I quizzed colleagues.
When I became pregnant, I applied the same need-to-be-an-expert-and-research-the-hell-out-of-it strategy to pregnancy. I cross-referenced the prego-bible, What To Expect When You’re Expecting, with the more light-hearted, Australian Up the Duff. I read three books on raising twins, two on breastfeeding, and one on parenting, and I also lurked on babycenter.com’s forums. In retrospect, this was probably an attempt to feel less out-of-control of my body, in that Ripley/Sigourney/Alien type of way.
When my twins were born, I kept What To Expect in the First Year handy; I used it often as a reference, thumbing through it for info on fevers, green goo-poo, and to see how far behind my kids were on learning to smile.
By the time Vivian and William turned one, though, I threw out the books.
Bye Bye Anonymous Advice
I was worn out by competitive parenting. Maybe because I couldn’t win, I ceased to care about whose baby walked or signed first, whose baby was breastfed, whose sleep strategy was best. Middle-class-me was part of a generation of professional women who were used to a high level of expertise, information at their fingertips, and living far from their families.
What happened to relying on our foremothers to share their hints?
I started to recall events that had taught me the most; all of these involved witnessing or by listening to real live people.
- My mom, as I’ve mentioned before, can anticipate and divert a crisis long before it happens. Whenever she visits, she seems to instinctively know when Vivian is premeditating, plotting to steal William’s toy-of-the-moment. My mom, between sips from her cup of tea bottle of beer, manages to offer Vivian a seemingly better toy, before I can shift my butt off the couch. Continue reading
Leanne Shirtliffe is the mother of seven-year-old twins, Thing 1 and Thing 2. She lived in Asia for eight years, which turned out to be a build-your-own-family adventure. Leanne writes for Nickelodeon and pens a humour column for The Calgary Herald. She is represented by Jill Marr of the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency in California. 
