Why do you need to read a random person's blog to know it's ok to parent your way?

Because our society has trained moms and dads everywhere to doubt their instincts. We've been seduced into 'method parenting'- The Ferber method, Attachment Parenting, the list goes on and on. Do a Google search of the words "parenting methods" and you are inundated with the latest and greatest in reasons and research why one parenting "method" works better than another.

It. Drives. Me. Crazy.

I have two kids. I was a newly minted pediatrician when my first was born. No amount of education in pediatrics could have prepared me for the job of parenting. Sure, I knew when I needed to take my baby to see a doctor other than myself-- but that was where the buck stopped. Everything was a guessing game, a battle of judgment and doing what the "perfect" mother would do. But who defined the perfect mother? For me-- the internet. I obsessed over every little ounce of breast milk I couldn't produce, that he was still using a pacifier at two, or that he wasn't potty trained by 3. And then I had my second. And the clarity knocked me in the head. It didn't matter. My kids wouldn't go to kindergarten with a paci. It was ok to put my son to bed at 9:30 because I hadn't seen him in two days. It was ok for them to go to daycare 10 hours out of the day because I could still give of myself completely for the other 14.

Parenting has become commercialized. We have been led to believe that if we don't follow the "rules" of childhood eating, the "rules" of sleeping, the "rules" of pacifiers, the "rules" of toilet training-- that we don't know what we are doing. And it couldn't be farther from the truth.

I'm here to convince you that the right way to parent is the way that works for you and your family. No one family will parent in the exact same way another does. And that's OK. To be clear, there are RULES-- which I will detail in my next post. But the "rules" are just not real. They are ways to make you feel like it's this way or the highway. And it really never is. I know this through experience. Experience of taking care of many many children who have been my patients, and more than anything, taking care of my own two children. I've seen way too many mothers and fathers become disillusioned by the judgment they feel riddled by when they feel like they are parenting "wrong"-- when in fact, they are doing it just right.