Less Parenting

 The Free Press has a new article The Secret to Parenting:  Do Less of It. I don't need to read it to know that I agree with it.  I often say to young couples about children "Have more children and pay less attention to them.  They'll be fine." It is analogous to the Rules of the House of God in the book of the same name about medical residency after med school.  The chief resident would tell the first years do as little medicine as possible. This was not laziness, but wisdom.  Over time, the author learned that the second half of the lesson was save it for when you really need it. The same applies for parenting.  Some children will require a lot (though even those should have as mujch time on their own as can be managed). All children will have episodes where they requirte more parenting. We found that once we mutually reached the conclusion that the current behavior required some sort of heightened response, defining what was wrong usually pointed to the answer.

I wish we had learned the lesson earlier.  Our first son in particular could have benefited from less pressure.  He would have done as well with half the effort. The three adopted sons all had periods when they needed more intervention, but we had learned to back off more by then and it was doable.