Commandment 3 Avoid Experts - Free-Range Kids, How to Raise Safe, Self-Reliant Children (Without Going Nuts with Worry) by Lenore Skenazy - lamareadeisintomi ognibocconeconta? competizionetragenitori mammalavoroallamoda ilsensocomuneminato lebasibasilari orasaichiaccusare lapaurafavendere degenerazionedelpensierocritico
Did you read What to Expect When You’re Expecting? Of course you did. Or your spouse did. Everyone did. I did. I found it very helpful. And horrible.Read more at location 594
as the introduction to the fourth edition cheerfully proclaims, “More symptoms and more solutions than ever before.”Read more at location 601
Let’s take a glance at the twenty-nine pages on “eating well.” (Not to be confused with the brand extension, What to Eat When You’re Expecting—a whole book. By the time you’re done reading it, the baby’s in law school.)Read more at location 603
“Each bite during the day is an opportunity to feed that growing baby of yours healthy nutrients.” Not each meal. Not each day. Each bite has to be carefully consideredRead more at location 606
maybe the slow class at school for junior. Maybe weight problems for life. Or worse.Read more at location 610
“better birthweight, improved brain development, reduced risk for certain birth defects. . . .”Read more at location 611
“Lose the guilt, hold the deprivation, and allow yourself a treat every once in a while.” A treat that will make “your tastebuds jump for joy.” And what exactly would that fantastic treat be? “A blueberry muffin.”Read more at location 616
on the one hand, it’s hard to argue with a book that says pregnant women should be eating well. On the other hand, it’s hard not to argue with a book that drives pregnant women crazy.Read more at location 620
As an obstetrician who teaches at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York City, this is the sum total of his dietary advice for expectant moms: “Just eat like you have your whole life, but eat a little more.”Read more at location 622
(Aren’t the people who think about the consequences of each bite generally referred to as anorexics?)Read more at location 625
you would fail or at least forget the million particulars that you’re supposed to do. And then you’ll feel bad.Read more at location 639
The Happiest Toddler on the Block—ah yes, let’s compete for whose kid is happier—teachesRead more at location 640
What if you want to encourage good behavior in your child? Saying “Yay!” is no longer enough. Happiest Toddler suggests rewarding moppets “with a pen check mark on the back of their hands when they have done something good.”Read more at location 646
“First, my Lord, you woke up and did proceed not to throw your binky across the room. Huzzah, huzzah. Then, my Lord, when it was time for the day’s morning repast, you did splendidly wield your spoon like a big boy . . .”Read more at location 651
not just basic advice like “Try not to yell very much.” No, they tell you the exact words, like you’re a bumbling amateur who needs a script to say the right thing.Read more at location 656
in a book with the really promising title Am I a Normal Parent? there’s a whole section on how not to quash your child’s will to live when he asks if you like the picture he drew.Read more at location 658
“One way to help your child trust your response would be to take a minute or so to really look at the drawing and then, instead of commenting on the final product, say something about the process. For example, you might say, ‘I like the way you drew a black circle around the sun to make it stand out. I also like the red shirt on the boy in the picture. It reminds me of the shirt you wore to your last birthday party.’Read more at location 660
So I guess “That’s beautiful, hon!” makes them think we’re total liars and the world is a stinking cesspool of phonies?Read more at location 665
That same book has a whole page about whether to tell your child the tooth fairy is hooey—aRead more at location 669
Why do we suddenly need an expert telling us how to broach this touchy subject?Read more at location 671
“What books and videos should I choose for my child’s potty library?” Her what?Read more at location 673
But when an author starts telling you not only to read potty books aloud to your child but to “extend your child’s favorite potty stories and songs into everyday play situations” and to “use hand puppets, finger puppets or spoon puppets to have a conversation about pottyRead more at location 685
Where did this bizarre reliance on these folks come from? And can we wean ourselves off of it? Jillian Swartz, editor in chief of the online magazine Family Groove, believes it all started the same way the Food Network did, sort of. “Every ten years or so,” says Swartz, “a new, once-mundane job becomes deified. Think: Chefs in the nineties and handymen and home decorators in the two thousands.” About twenty years or so ago, another lowly job suddenly became chic: motherhood.Read more at location 692
fetishization of every last mother-loving detail of parenthood, and an ever-burgeoning breed of experts to propagate this often mind-numbing minutiae.Read more at location 698
The avalanche of expert advice—and nonexpert advice on nonetheless very enticing Web sites—undermines our belief that we are equipped with enough common senseRead more at location 701
That battered confidence, in turn, leads us to look ever more desperately to the experts wherever we find them.Read more at location 702
Then when—surprise—our kids turn out not to be perfect, we know who’s to blame. We are!Read more at location 706
If only we’d put aside that deep-fried Oreo in our second trimester, she’d be in the gifted program at school. And if our child is cranky? Uncommunicative? Headed for five to ten years’ hard labor? That just might be because we told her, “Look, sweetie, a broken cracker is not the end of the world!” instead of saying, “Oooh, your cracker broke. Sad sad sad sad sad!” and respectfully relating.Read more at location 707
So what’s the alternative? Reading every book and article and trying to do absolutely all the stuff they recommend? (She asked rhetorically.) Or avoiding the experts entirely and perhaps missing out on some good advice? Well, it’s obviously somewhere in the middle,Read more at location 711
They’re more ready to believe the ones who say, “Whatever you’ve heard is fine, isn’t.”Read more at location 723
Most of us came of age right alongside the consumer protection movement. As kids we learned that car companies knew about brake problems but hid them from the public, even as the cigarette manufacturers knew they were giving us cancer but pretended that they didn’t. Understandably, we grew up pretty cynical. But over the years, as we stopped trusting additives and preservatives and pesticides and saccharine and Western medicine and government and pretty much anything that wasn’t an organic potato wrapped in a recycled paper bag from Whole Foods, some of us just threw up our hands and decided it was impossible to trust anything or anyone. (Except Oprah.) The minute we heard something new and nefarious about a time-honored product or practice, a whole lot of us were ready to embrace it. Shampoo gives you cancer? We knew it!Read more at location 728
But as Barrett points out (knowing full well he will sound like just another “establishment” source not to be trusted): most companies really do not try to sell us deadly or defective products. Even if they have no corporate conscience whatsoever, doing wrong is still not worth it to them, because if they harm a single child, they’ll have to recall millions of products.Read more at location 736
So we have a choice: we can trust the self-proclaimed experts warning us that our body wash is toxic—and by the way, so is everything else—or we can just be glad we’re living in a highly regulated society that truly isn’t teeming with killer products.Read more at location 740
Dr. Spock famously began his baby care book with these reassuring words: “Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do.” The mantra of today’s experts—“Trust us.Read more at location 742
remember that the best child-rearing advice boils down to the old basics. Listen to your kids. Love them. Keep them out of oncoming traffic.Read more at location 745
Note: LE BASI
