Summer time and the parenting advice is not easy

I appreciate good advice, knowledge as much as anyone I know.  I am totally comfortable with my dorky nature of wanting to know things, to seek things out, to be grateful for those who offer advice and help when I need it.

Yet I am so over and so annoyed with the vast amount of parenting advice out there that is not really advice. It is all about waxing poetic on how wonderful that person's decision was to do whatever and how if you aren't doing it you fall short.  I am over being told how I fail as a mother, as a woman just to be told a few weeks later that whatever I tried to switch too will pretty much be the end of any hope for my children.

It is easy these days to be an expert - I mean I could blog about it and pretend that it is based on professional opinion when in fact a blog is pretty much the editorial section of the newspaper. Yes some facts will be there but opinion is not fact, though this seems to be very blurred on all levels these days.

So as I raise my kids to the best of of my ability, I triage through advice and rely on my trusted resources - women I actually know whose kids I happen to also know.

It is not easy being a parent, rewarding and amazing yes but not easy.  It shouldn't be, you are after all responsible for a whole other being, beings.  Their care is in your hands, literally, and who they become is a result of most of your influence.  I know we like to say that their peers, and they do too, are their greatest influence but they aren't they are just the voice they choose to hear.  However, I am a firm believer that our voice lives on like that annoying supermarket muzak in their head.

I do not think, beyond living in places of extremes, that doing one thing or not doing one thing is what is going to make the child. For me I find it works when I try and parent much like I am told to do with all else, think, be moderate, be fair, I am not always right and have to admit it.   That's it - I got not other must do's because this blog is my opinion and I have no real qualifications, as most authors of those "you must make sure to" articles don't either, to make a fact based declaration.

I try to teach my kids to be kind, to understand their world and how I can be of use in helping them navigate it and most of all to build a trust (hence the muzak in their heads) that translates to them knowing when to come to me for advice.

My kids are fortunate and they are told so but we chose to give them things, in good spirit, so we also choose to make sure they know that they have more than they need but not so much that they forget it.

I expose my kids as often as possible to people, places, foods, ideas that are diverse not because I think that makes them better but because it makes them curious and open to ideas.  That is my kids, may not be yours, neither one of us is wrong.

Maybe all these articles annoy me because they serve to remind us more often than not to focus on the "parenting as competition with other parents" instead of being truly a reference for all of us who should admit that we wing it a lot more than we actually know 100% of what we are doing.  Maybe you don't, maybe you are reading this and think none of this applies, that works for me.

I applaud anyone who chooses to be a parent, as much as I also support those that choose not to be for whatever reasons.  So what if our children are imperfect they are human after all, not some prize to be held up.  They are the reward not the means to get one for being written about.

So go be parents - whatever that means to you - be the parents you know your children need because most of us know that more than any article can ever tell us.  If you have a nugget of info to share pass it on but if you have only "I did it betters" well then good luck with your writing career, this girl is passing on that.