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How Parenting Experts Came To The Conclusion That Tantrums Are Universal

Friday, March 28, 2014

By Leanna Rae Scott


The first step in bringing up children totally free of tantrums during their entire childhoods is to stop believing the decades-old advice of the parenting experts-that temper tantrums are natural, normal, inevitable, and mostly unpreventable when raising children. This advice is faulty. Virtually all children could be brought up without tantrums if the caregivers only knew how to do it. I can help you know how. My first five babies all had tantrums but the last eight didn't. With number five, thirty-three years ago, I learned what I needed to change in my parenting style, and within one week or so he was free of tantrums, forever. None of my last eight babies ever threw temper tantrums because I'd shown them from their births on they could trust me to respond as they needed to their anger.

Where might the myth of tantrum universality have originated from-besides that it was handed down through generations? It hasn't been clear how many kids parenting experts have had on average, but by my limited pre-Wikipedia and pre-Internet research of twenty or so years ago, it was perhaps one or two each, and it hasn't likely increased since then. Most parenting experts who write books seem averse to disclosing how many children they've raised. We're often left to guess, judging from the number of people they've dedicated their books to. I'm not kidding.

I seriously doubt any parent could learn all there is to learn about parenting by one or two preschoolers or even one or two teenagers. I was still learning important skills with my fourth and fifth kids, and I haven't stopped learning yet. Parents typically feel like hiding their parenting imperfections. Nobody enjoys openly admitting their parenting faults.

Nonetheless, this is how I believe the tantrum-universality myth came about. Parenting experts (who got to be experts mostly from attending college classes and not so much from raising kids) usually have a deeper-than-average parenting need to present as the perfect parent. Because of calling themselves the experts in raising kids, this implies that they're close to perfect at it.

However, not very long after becoming parents, the majority of these experts find their own kids throwing tantrums. This validates their textbook learning about tantrum inevitability and universality, because if even they the experts have tantrum-throwing kids, certainly the inexpert parents couldn't do any better, right? Wrong-millions of inexpert parents have accomplished raising tantrum-free kids. I believe tantrum-free child rearing is highly possible, and preferable. It's also a much more enjoyable type of parenting (than the alternative) for all people involved, counting the general public. I can share with you what I've learned about creating a family lifestyle absolutely free of tantrums.




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