#5 – Culture does not dictate children’s development. Just because a teacher, grandparent, friend, book, or person on the internet thinks your child “ought to be ready by now” does not necessarily mean that they are.
#4 – Hurting kids—emotionally, physically, or mentally—does not make anything better.
If you’re looking for a book to tell you how to punish, discipline, embarrass, isolate, shame, or otherwise hurt your kid into changing something about themself, you won’t find that here.
#3 – You do not need to jump a decade down the road with your worries. Your child doing something annoying or inconsiderate now does not mean that they will be an annoying or inconsiderate adult. They are supposed to be immature and childish. They are not mature. They are children!
#2 – Your child feeling sad is not inherently bad. Your child feeling sad does not mean that you must act to resolve it. Human beings just feel sad sometimes, your child included. Your role is to be present with your child in their feelings, whatever those feelings are.
#1 – Parenting is hard, in some capacity, for absolutely every parent. You are not failing because parenting feels hard; you are a human who is doing a hard thing, and that is why the thing feels hard.
When I try to capture what I want to tell EVERYBODY…it all falls into big, broad, sweeping generalities. But one of my favorite things about the book is all the little, nuanced, specificities that it has — and how each one only lasts about a page, so it never feels like an overwhelming slog. You can open it for just a minute or two and still come away with something actionable and real.
