The “push present” essay is what put it over the top for me. There’s no gift that anyone could give you that would match delivering another human being, filled with limitless possibility, into the world. Why even try? And why not take that money and start a college fund for the new baby–we’ve already borrowed so much from their generation that it seems only fair.

I remember lots of my Sixties hippie friends raising their kids in so-called ‘new ways’…basically trying to indocrinate their kids with strange (and even political thoughts). By the time kids are teens they usually reject most of their parents’ beliefs as being dated, stupid, etc.

One hippie friend of man named his boy ‘Stinson-Tin-Pony’. I’m sure that boy must have had his name changed to Joe or Jim by the time he became a teen.

Me and my mom raised my neice for her first nine years. I learned a lot about parenting along the way (and I probably have enough good parenting tips to fill a book).

One good bit of advice I read about was how to teach a child about safety. That’s a subject too often overlooked in many parents quest to only concentrate on raising a gifted and successful child.

The tip was to meet your child at their own eye-level when cautioning them about danger. Meaning…when you are trying to teach a toddler to be ‘safer’…a good method…instead of just yelling “Be careful!! You’re going to get hurt if you do that! Put That Down! Watch Out!, etc.

A better method is to kneel down to the child’s eye-level and simply talk eye-to-eye and say things like “WE want to make sure we don’t get hurt, so we need to do things this way”.

The point being that a child can relate to your ‘serious message’ best if you kneel down and talk in a calmer way at an eye-to-eye-level about the logic of your advice…instead of just screaming at your kid from five foot taller position.

That might seem like a small thing….but, with my neice, a lot of important advice was much better received (and acted upon) after she heard it from her own eye-level.

Okay. That’s my parenting tip of the day. Nothing too radical…but definitely something that can help parents and kids to communicate.

Later,

It seems that bad parenting books are legion, probably because they have a huge potential audience no matter what. I challenge you to find one or two good, well-written, emiprical-evidence-based parenting guides, and review them.

One that made a strong impression on me was “Bringing Up a Moral Child” by Michael Schulman. (You have to be pretty specific–there are so many books with similar titles out there.) I am doubtful that his approach is “new” as his subtitle claims, but it is a very well-written book, and almost made me want to have kids just so I could raise ‘em right!

“Teaching Your Children Values” by Linda and Richard Eyre is pretty good as well, with different value-inculcating exercises for all ages, so you can keep it throughout your child-rearing career, from pink drooling screaming thing all the way to tall geeky driving thing.

Both these books come from a secular (and pluralist) perspective as well.