Today’s Washington Post features an op-ed piece on parenting advice, parenting  magazines, and the neverending, black hole of parenting publications.  I know.  Decry the massive amounts of publishing about parenting on the one hand, and add to the burgeoning masses of it that’s available and constantly growing on the other.  That irony hasn’t escaped me.

Nor should it escape the editors of The Washington Post.  I thought, as a follow-up to my open complaint about the parenting advice available in the Post, that I should also comment on Lenore Skenazy’s piece, “Parenting Advice?  That’s Just Quackery.” in which the author condemns the state of parenting publications and our complicity in its consumption. In broad strokes, Skenazy faults the masses of poor, hastily-written, and poorly-conceived articles offering effete advice to parents and blames parents’ collective loss of confidence in their own common sense on the proliferation of bad advice and trivial but frantic controversy. Essentially, she makes a good point.  Quoting an article in Parenting magazine that recommends that parents, for example, “Choose a sunny day when there’s no chance of lightning,” in order to take one’s child out kite flying, Skenazy points to example after example of lame advice that reinforces a reader’s inability to make simple decisions or observations for one’s self. Whether it is eating chocolate while pregnant or products that test bathwater temperature for your little bundle of joy, Skenazy explains that our willingness to read and to consume advice, regardless of its value, and our suspension of our own common sense in deference to the publishing industry’s frenzy to produce debates has collectively eroded parents’ sense of confidence in their own decision-making skills.  I think back on all the articles I’ve read recently in parent publications and wonder, is much of this really news to parents? No.  Not really.

Can parenting literature go beyond creating controversy?  Can we expect more from parenting magazines, advice columns, book publications, and blogs (admittedly, like this one)?  I think it (and we) can.  Parenting literature is best not only when it opens our eyes or alerts us to potential dangers, but more importantly when it shares genuinely useful knowledge and skills with parents.  Of course, this is hardly a solution for those interested in publishing volumes and volumes of literature, and requires that the authors, and more importantly the editors, of each publication understand its audience–and not simply consider them to be oversized lemmings.  Then again, that also requires us as readers to ignore banal articles and bad advice, but we’re so busy chasing the “Top Ten Ways to Solve Potty-training Woes” to notice that we’re falling off a proverbial cliff. And if we can’t keep straight whether we feel more or less like lemmings, keep in mind that neither can The Post.  In case, we start feeling confident in our parenting skills, don’t worry. I’m sure The Post (or any other publisher for that matter) will try to relieve us of that feeling by the next issue.

The following letter is a response to a Family Almanac article in the Washington Post.  I’ve attached the link.  I sent this letter (admittedly rushed and written while 2 kids climbed nearby furniture) to an email address included in the print edition of this article; however, the email address did not work, and the letter was never delivered.

Dear Ms. Kelly,

Regarding your article “Mom’s at Split Ends for Dealing with Toddler’s Hair-Raising Antics” (Washington Post 4/23/2009), I must take issue with your advice. Any article which includes the line “All it takes to rear a toddler…” shows that the author is out of touch with the daily challenges of parenting a toddler–if for no other reason than demonstrating a lack of empathy. Despite being a mother, you can still be out of touch with the urgency, the freneticism, and exhaustion that most parents of toddlers (those of us who don’t have 24-hour per day nanny services, at least) experience. You’ve lost this reader because your emotional removal from the experience and clear nostalgia (the kind of nostalgia that comes from being a grandparent, frankly) has affected the “voice” in your writing.

The child pulling her mother’s hair isn’t pulling it *because* she doesn’t know that it hurts. She’s doing it because she gets a reaction. Pain is irrelevant. She loves the attention and response that it brings… even if it’s negative. She may even have a cursory understanding of the pain it causes, but a 15-month old child has not developed this kind of empathy yet. Instead, she’s playing the role of the little scientist who loves watching how everyone responds to her… and thinks it’s quite a great game. She cannot psychologically make the connection between her own pain (the gentle tugging of her own fingers on her own hair) and the pain she causes someone else. True, she lacks impulse control… but she also loves a reaction. You have to take the reaction away from the child before the behavior will stop.

Parenting a toddler requires something almost more impossible than endless patience, encyclopedic understanding, boundless humor, and prescient prevention… it requires knowing when to be emotionally vulnerable and intimate and when to be detached. It is one more skill that seems unattainable, until you remember why you do it. Then, like most of the skills we learn as parents, we keep working at it because we love them, and it’s what they need to grow.

Sincerely,
Lisa Rhody