My office has all sorts of magazine subscriptions to numerous different magazines and when the box gets full I must go through them and get rid of the old ones. I was flipping through an old Readers Digest when I came across a small article called Phrase of the Month. "Serenity Parenting" it reads:
"Once I became a dad of twins, I noticed that parents around me had a different take on the power of nurture," writes Bryan Caplan in the Wall Street Journal. "I saw them turning parenthood into a chore, shuttling their kids to activities even the kids didn't enjoy, forbidding television, desperately trying to make their babies eat another spoonful of vegetables. Parents' main rationale is that they're sacrificing now to turn their kids into healthy, smart, successful, well-adjusted adults. But according to decades of research, their rationale is wrong. Parents should lighten up. I call it 'serenity parenting'. Focus on enjoying the journey with your child instead of trying to control his destination. Accept that your child's future depends mostly on him. Realize that the point of discipline is to make your kid treat people around him decently--not to mold him into a better adult."
-Bryan Caplan is the author of Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids (Basic Books)-
I honestly couldn't agree with this more and am going to strive extra hard to apply this perspective to my life and the relationship I have with my son.
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