Stumbling Toward Knowing Best
I made this pie.
Pediatricians, therapists, academics, your in-laws, your friends and that judgy lady in the grocery line have their opinions about how to parent “correctly,” but you know your child best.
Right? I mean, sure! Yes! Of course I know my child best!
I think.
It's a grand irony that the biggest concession by the expert parenting industrial complex -- that parents best understand their own kids -- leaves me bewildered. If I know my kid so well, why do I feel so unsure about my parenting choices?
Turns out that “knowing best” as a parent feels nothing like “knowing best” in other contexts.
Take pie, for example. I've eaten a lot of pie in my life. I know pie, I love pie, I have opinions about pie, and I can say with confidence: I know my pie preferences best.
But as a parent, even my most strongly-held beliefs get called into question. I may think I know something -- about getting my kid to sleep, say, or teaching him responsibility and empathy -- but then life has other plans.
For me, “knowing best” as a parent isn't bolt-out-of-the-blue self-assurance. It's a process of coming-into-focus that sometimes starts with complete and utter cluelessness.
If you wonder why you don't radiate parenting confidence even though you supposedly "know your child best," consider that you're coming to know your child as she's coming to know herself. And that every child grows and learns and changes so quickly that “knowing” them is a dynamic state — as in motion as they are.
A version of this post originally appeared on my Babble Voices blog, The Accidental Expert.
