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Tuesday, April 28, 2020

Teacher Tom: The Secret to Being a Parent

Teacher Tom: The Secret to Being a Parent

The Secret to Being a Parent


There is scant evidence that the little things we do as parents, be it co-sleeping or tiger mommy-ing, have much of a predictable impact on how our children turn out. I have my opinions about parenting trends and can't help but feel that some of them have the potential to do damage, while others have the potential to do good, but the truth is that the world is so large and complex and our children are so human and complex that we can simply never know. Most, I expect, have no impact one way or another.


When our daughter was around three months old, my wife and I had come to our wit's ends over her sleep, or lack thereof. She seemed to doze all day and wake all night. We tried every sleep technique we could find, including having her in bed with us, beside us, rocking her to sleep, nursing her to sleep, we even tried putting her bassinet on top of the running clothes dryer for a few days (which worked until the end of the cycle). We finally tried a version of "cry it out." I've never admitted this in public before because the technique has such a bad reputation amongst readers here, but for us, after about 15 minutes of fussing, she slept through the night on the first attempt. I'll never forget my wife and me lurching awake the following morning, panicked that we hadn't heard a peep from in her several hours, only to find her in her bed, eyes open, gurgling happily.

From that moment, she was a solid, even an eager sleeper. She never fought bedtime or nap time. In fact, she would often tell us, "It's time to go night night." Most mornings she would lie in bed singing for twenty minutes or so before she called us in to her room with a cheery, "I wanna wake up now!" It was a daily concert played over the baby monitor CONTINUE READING: 
Teacher Tom: The Secret to Being a Parent