Expert Parenting Advice vs. Actual Parenting Reality..

Rynus is 2 years 3 months old already, wow!!!

Honestly I have not been realizing how time flies with his growth. We are not paying much attention to his development milestones, maybe because he's the 2nd child of the family and we still have so much to go through with Renzo, who is just 1.5 years away from entering primary school. But today, when a friend of mine shared this "Expert Parenting Advice vs. Actual Parenting Reality" chart on facebook, I find it extremely interesting and tried to relate my own experience with Rynus' upbringing.

You see, expert is not THAT WRONG after all!!

The expert's advice might sound like "mission impossible" to many, but if you understand that your action is going to benefit your kids, you would then agree with the experts, majority of the time. The only few items that I could not agree with, are more because I know our kids will soon outgrow those stages and once they are able to communicate well, there's higher chance you could change them for better behavior with proper reasoning.   

I often say each kid is uniquely special and there's no parenting formula that works for all. But with my 2 boys having totally different characters and personalities, I noticed that our principles of parenting do not change much except for a bit of twisting here and there, although their reaction/response are often different.

For example, when Renzo was around this age, he had many requests as he was able to express himself very well. Of course he cried a lot more as majority of his requests were not reasonable, and when we refuse to give in, he often ended up with throwing tantrums. We had to prevent him from throwing tantrums by preempting him with what to expect, and giving him options to choose from. He's not easily distracted because he's very certain about what he wants and in a way, he expects things to go his way, all the time. So "alternatives", is not a solution. He has to be presented with different options, and if possible, way before he even makes his request.

As for Rynus, he is a happy go lucky boy in general, he doesn't cry or throws tantrums for no reason. His usual requests are not much (generally about food only), except for things like: going out for a walk often, when the sky is dark at night; changing to his swimwear to get a dip in the pool, on a rainy day; turning on the TV to watch his favorite Dora or Leapfrog DVD, right before bed time; unlocking daddy's car door each time, without knowing how to slot in the car key properly, etc, etc.... But unfortunately, or I should say fortunately, he's not able to communicate that well like Renzo, so instead of preparing him with what to expect, we react to his "unreasonable" requests by distracting him with other alternatives. He will definitely cry and whine just like any other kid, or most of the kids I should say, but that usually lasts for an extremely short period of time only.

If I say I've learned enough tips to turn Renzo into a tantrum free boy over the years, then Rynus is probably a tantrum free boy to begin with, erh, or maybe, just not yet... LOL...

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