We don't come with a user manual.
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It’s not that I don’t believe the insights and advice of scholars, researchers and other parents don’t have merit, they certainly do. But if parenting was a science, why are there many different schools of thought, and sometimes wildly different ‘expert’ opinions on how to successfully raise a child.
I think most people can agree that there are some approaches and actions that are universally destructive and constructive to the development and welfare of a child. But so much of it is up in the air. Never is the truth more evident that one-size does not fit all than in parenting.
Anyone who has more than one child knows that their children are all born different. Sure they share DNA, but my children are as separate and distinct from me as I am from Cassandra. They each have a unique spirit, personality and biology that has never existed before in time or eternity, at least so far as we know.
So whilst we can offer generalized advice and insights, and we can and should read books to help us increase our knowledge on parenting, for me there is one glaring problem that no book, scholar or parent can solve.
We aren’t born with a user manual. When I was born, my parents didn’t receive a book titled, how to raise Matthew in Bristol England between the years of 1990 and 2018. That book doesn’t exist. I likewise do not have a similar book for any of my children.
I have concluded that the best way to be a successful parent is to continually be developing the Christlike attributes of love, charity, gentleness, kindness, mercy, meekness, justice, equity and to then live so that you can be guided by the Holy Spirit in your actions.
Because no book can tell me what to do in every given situation with any of my children. There are some general principles, but no specifics. What works for one might not work for another, and perhaps might even cause the reverse of what we are trying to accomplish to happen.
Life is complex, humans are complicated, so perhaps we ought to speak less in absolutes and definitives and more in explorative and inquiring ways.
Book Club
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