Parenting For Dummies

Sandra Hardin Gookin, Dan Gookin

• Publisher: For Dummies
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780764554186
• eBook ISBN: 9781118069738
• Edition: 2

Written by parents for parents! We humans are pretty clever. We've mastered fire, invented the wheel, calculated the age of the Universe, sent people to the Moon, built machines that think, and cracked the genome. So you'd think that with all our smarts, somebody would've come up with a surefire formula for raising kids. Maybe that's because every child, like every parent, is an individual, and no two parent-child relationships are ever the same. So, you can give up any notions of being a perfect parent. But, you can learn to keep the big mistakes to a minimum and make the parenting enterprise easier and more rewarding for your children and you. Which is where this book comes in.

Whether you're child is a newborn, a teen, or somewhere in-between, Parenting For Dummies gives you the scoop on parenting basics. From dealing with a crying baby and potty training, to building self-esteem and talking with them about sex, it offers a gold mine of up-to-date advice and guidance on how to:

• Learn to communicate with your kids
• Develop a good relationship with your kids
• Keep your kids safe and healthy
• Help your kids grow up to be good people
• Keep your cool and control their behavior
• Discipline constructively and with a minimum of stress
• Build self-esteem in your children
• Avoid committing the parenting sins your parents taught you

Experts Sandy and Dan Gookin—she's the parenting expert for Parents Magazine and Working Mother Magazine and he's a father of four—avoid the psychological hype and medical terminology and give you the straight poop on all aspects of child-rearing, including:

• Speaking and listening to kids
• The importance of being consistent
• Keeping a sense of humor
• Dealing with babies
• Childhood growth and development
• Health and nutrition
• Kids' changing physical needs
• Developing a good person

Parenting For Dummies gives you the know-how and skills you need to be the parent of healthy, happy kids.

Part I

The Basic Stuff You Must Know

In this part . . .

**IN a DROPCAP**

The Egyptians knew that to make the whole pyramid concept work, they had to start with a strong, solid base. This base had to be all-encompassing and broad enough to handle the weight of everything that went on top of it. Making a good pyramid took a long time. Many attempts at building pyramids failed, but those aren’t the structures that you see in pictures or get to tour.

This part serves as a solid base for building a parenting pyramid. The following six chapters provide you with information and guidelines that can help you construct the sturdy foundation upon which you can build a great relationship with your kids. As was true of the original pyramids, you’ll run into stumbling blocks when you work on your parenting skills. But, if you have a strong foundation, your kids can pile all kinds of stuff on you, and you’ll handle it just fine.

Chapter 1

The Parenting Game: Everyone’s a Winner

In This Chapter

Working at a job that you can never quit

Discovering the four duties of parenting

Honing the five basic parenting skills

A dmit it, you’re not in charge. Your children are. You know it, and worse yet, they know it. Children have a wonderful plan of attack: They draw you in, and then they pounce! They know exactly when to cry. They know precisely how to get you to say, “Yes.” They know the millisecond you’re no longer looking. Parenting is like playing a game of chess with an opponent who has an IQ of 300. You know they’re manipulating you, but as parents you don’t want to destroy your opponents — although sometimes the thought does cross your mind. You’re torn between wanting to love them and the bitter realities of having to raise them properly. You want to do what you think is right without resenting your child just because he or she is manipulating you.

Welcome to The Parenting Game.

Although at times you may yearn for it, the object of this game isn’t total victory, but rather a mutual solution that keeps everyone happy. You want to raise a child who turns into a well-adjusted adult, and you want to do it without being escorted away by men in white coats fitting you in a jacket that has sleeves long enough to wrap around you and tie behind your back. But you can’t play the game without the proper parenting skills. That’s precisely what this chapter shows you.

Leveling the Parenting Game Playground

No parent ever has or does everything right, so wake up and take a good whiff of that morning coffee. You won’t be perfect. You will lose your temper. You will yell — loud enough at times to stir the neighbors. You will give in to the whining, if only as barter for a few brief moments of silence. And you will feed your kids cake, pie (after all, it has fruit), or various brand-name snack cakes and sugar-packed breakfast cereals for dinner at least once. That’s all okay. No parent is perfect, so all that you can do is your level best. If your kids grow up to be happy, wholesome, and productive adults, people who are valued in the community, and you wind up having a wonderful relationship with them, then you’ve won.

So, the object of the game is discovering how to perfect your parenting and relationship skills. To do that you must understand three basic things:

Parenting is a job that you can never quit.

Parenting means playing some new and exciting roles.

Parenting means finding out how to develop healthy relationships with your children.

Some people say that the parenting game never ends. After all, it would be nice to have an answer to the question, “At what age will my children be completely independent?” Alas, the answer is, “Never.”

The American Dream is not owning your own house. The American Dream is getting your children out of your house. — Congressman Dick Armey

Parenting: A job you can never quit

You can’t just quit the parenting game. As a parent, your job doesn’t start at 8 a.m. and end at 5 p.m. It’s a 24-hour-a-day job. And having an outside job doesn’t mean that when you get home your job is over. Nope, instead, when you come home, you instantly change into your parenting uniform and get right back to work. There is no time off!

Don’t use silk or white as a part of your parenting uniform; puke stains.

Your job as a parent consists of several duties and responsibilities to your kids. You love them. You feed them. You take care of them when they’re sick. You play with them. You educate them with what you remember of your book-learning and common sense. You discipline them. You listen to them. And, occasionally you do something really goofy on purpose just to cause them embarrassment in front of their friends (who often think you’re really cool for doing it).

Despite all that, remember that you can’t slack off, you can’t quit, and you know that parenting isn’t accompanied by many tax breaks. Parenting is your responsibility, regardless of whether you have an outside job.

Why do I keep bringing up the issue of an outside job? Because it is a major element in how parents treat their kids. People have a tough day at work and come home not wanting to deal with their children. Too bad! When you find yourself cutting short the time that you spend with your kids or ignoring them because you’ve already had a full day, that’s when it’s time to reevaluate your other job. Parenting is your first priority.

The good news is that your parenting job comes with a wonderful bonus plan. In return for your work, your kids will love you back, frustrate you, make you laugh, make you cry tears of joy and sorrow, anger you, and, eventually, make you really proud of them.

Knowing the game terminology

Kids aren’t born politically correct. So, if you have any tendencies toward political correctness, now is the time to face reality and get over them. Kids call poop what it is. They’re more than happy to explain it to you — repeatedly in great detail. The same is true of throw-up, barf, heave, and spit up. All are real things about which your kids are more than happy and willing to share their unique knowledge.

Believe it or not, all this is good. Children think adults are the weird ones who decide the meanings of these favored words — offensive or not. The thing to remember is that your kids are just trying to communicate. So, in this game, becoming comfortable with common, everyday, descriptive kid language, regardless of how tasteless it sometimes gets, is up to you.

The four duties of a parent

One thing you need to understand about the parenting game is that you must take on some new and important duties. Sure, you can still “be yourself,” but parenting requires you to understand that regardless of whether you want to accept these new duties, they nevertheless are yours, and it’s for your and your kids’ benefit that you do them well.

So here are the new roles that you must play:

A positive role model

A teacher

A friend and listener

A parent

The positive role model

A role model is someone you look up to and try to be like. Maybe it’s that woman down the street who raised five kids all to become doctors. Maybe it’s a fictional character. Batman was a great role model. Even when Batgir...

Table of contents

• Title
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part I : The Basic Stuff You Must Know
• Chapter 1: The Parenting Game: Everyone’s a Winner
• Chapter 2: Guidelines for Co-parenting (The Two-Party System)
• Chapter 3: Being a Consistent Parent
• Chapter 4: Following Through
• Chapter 5: The Art of Keeping Your Cool
• Chapter 6: Behavior Management
• Part II : Dealing with Babies
• Chapter 7: Holding and Handling the Baby
• Chapter 8: Breast-feeding versus Bottle-feeding
• Chapter 9: The Diaper Thing
• Chapter 10: Just for Babies: Sleeping, Bathing
• Chapter 11: Doing Your Part for the Economy: Food, Clothes, and Gear for Babies
• Chapter 12: Infant Health Concerns
• Chapter 13: Growth and Developmental Stuff
• Part III : Serving Your Child’s Physical Needs
• Chapter 14: Understanding Food and Nutrition
• Chapter 15: The Joys and Perils of Bathtime
• Chapter 16: Sleep, Glorious Sleep
• Chapter 17: Potty Training Perfected
• Part IV : Seeing to Your Child’s Health and Safety
• Chapter 18: Health and Hygiene
• Chapter 19: Going to the Doctor
• Chapter 20: Making Life Safer
• Chapter 21: Finding Good Child Care
• Part V : Developing a Good Person
• Chapter 22: Raising Your Child (12 to 24 Months)
• Chapter 23: Communicating with Your Child
• Chapter 24: Your New Big Job: Teacher
• Chapter 25: Social Skills That Make You Proud
• Chapter 26: Punishment and Discipline
• Chapter 27: Squelching Squabbling Siblings
• Part VI : The Part of Tens
• Chapter 28: Ten Things to Do Every Day
• Chapter 29: Ten Things for Your Conscience to Whisper in Your Ear
• Chapter 30: Ten Great Resources for Parents
• Part VII : Appendixes
• Appendix A: Safety
• Appendix B: Traveling
• Appendix C: Child Care
• Appendix D: Medical Care
• Appendix E: Keeping Your Children Well