Advice, self-help, information, suggestions—every where you turn there are other people who want to offer up their advice. After all, as I write these blogs and articles here in the Parenting blog, I am participating in that very reality of American life. As a parent, however, you will get far more advice and suggestions that you could ever implement and in the end—it is up to you to make your own choices and decisions. Keep in mind that most of it is just opinion and it is coming from people with as many questions and confusions as you have!
Whether it is a stranger telling you to put a hat on your baby, or the parent next to you at PTA telling you how “they” handle homework at “their” house—it is fine to simply smile and acknowledge all that advice but not feel obligated to apply every bit of it. Even those experts who write all those books are simply people too. Sure, they may have some information that can help us, but there are also plenty of times when it just does not apply or it does not fit our parenting style. That is okay too.
It took me years to learn about and become comfortable with the type of parent I am and to feel so confident and comfortable as to NOT be threatened by the fact that many parents do things differently. There is not one way to parent and there is not one parenting manual that suits and fits all the situations and families. Use some common sense, trust your instinct, expect to make mistakes and have to make things up as you go along and take all that advice with a grain of salt. After all, it is just other people like yourself trying to make sense of the overwhelming challenges of parenting.