Parenting Books: Mentor Approach Versus Expert Parenting Advice
As a parent who has accessed much expert parenting advice from many parenting books over the last forty years, I can say in regards to tantrums alone that much of the advice I received was faulty and detrimental. It contributed greatly to the temper tantrum behavior of my first five children.
I eventually learned to stop blindly trusting "expert" status and I chose to be, as much as possible, an informed consumer of parenting and other advice. I learned to consciously assess the advice of professionals while putting it to a test during the parenting my children, or to get second opinions before following advice that seemed questionable. I came to believe that this is my life, and it's up to me to minimize my wasted time and energy from following faulty advice from parenting books or elsewhere.
An additional problem I have with assigning expert status to myself and others is the connotation that accompanies it: that the "expert" is the person in the advising relationship that is the healthy, functional, educated, or wise one and that the recipient of the advice is the unhealthy, dysfunctional, uneducated, or unwise one. I believe that using the term "expert" creates this unnecessary and disrespectful imbalance in the advising relationship. In my opinion, this alone is adequate reason to avoid the use of the word "expert."
Instead of "expert," I much prefer to call myself a mentor, which I define as: a wise and trusted advisor or teacher. The term "mentor" has not acquired the same aforementioned negative connotation that "expert" has, plus "mentor" implies an earning of the trust involved, which is as it should be. I believe the "mentor" designation creates a more respectful dynamic in the advising or helping relationship. My methods of preventing and eliminating temper tantrums in children are based on the concept of respect, and hopefully so is my style of sharing what I’ve learned from my experience.