Writing -- Baby Talk: Information overload

The following article featured in a weekly column on parenting in the Women on Wednesday supplement of The Evening Echo, one of Ireland's leading regional daily newspapers. It appeared in the 07 July 2004 issue.

I was in Eason's yesterday and couldn't help but notice the bewildering array of books they stock on parenting. There was a complete set of shelves dedicated to the subject. Over on the magazine shelves there was an equally impressive collection of periodicals dedicated to the pursuit of parenting nirvana. I couldn't help asking myself where busy parents find the time to do so much reading.

Sometimes I think we read too much - or at least read too much into other people's ideals, values and beliefs. It's a trend that is particularly rife when it comes to a subject as ambiguous as parenting. As long as their views are printed in black and white and are nicely bound in a fancy dust-jacket we seem eager to follow the advice of these self-professed parenting boffins.

How on earth did people manage to raise children before this hoard of experts arrived on the scene? With our spiralling levels of juvenile crime, the increasing abuse of drugs and alcohol by young people and the widespread dysfunction of the modern family unit you could easily argue that they did a much better job than parents today.

The trouble is that there's so much advice out there now - in books, magazines, the media and of course that behemoth of knowledge the Internet - that parents are suffering from information overload. Confronted with myriad ways of dealing with every conceivable parenting conundrum we end up confused rather than enlightened. Our own instincts tend to get diluted by a swirling cocktail of conflicting opinion, and we slide into indecision, self-doubt and inaction. In the end we make vague, half-hearted choices that are inevitably ineffective - which sends us scurrying back to our sources in search of more answers. And so it continues.

It's easy for parents to get swept into the yawning abyss of information paralysis. Parenthood is a voyage into the unknown; naturally we tend to look for a guiding light before we stride into the darkness. Concerned mums and dads can spend considerable time and energy pursuing the elusive secrets of more effective parenting. But I believe that time and energy could be better spent actually being a parent rather than just reading about it.

Our shelves at home are pretty much devoid of books on parenting. After all, the kids couldn't care less about the latest and greatest parenting theories or this week's revolutionary parenting technique... they just want as much time and attention as possible from mum and dad. The bottom line is that nobody understands the unique and constantly evolving relationship between me and my girls better than I do… so what could possibly make the advice of a faceless stranger more compelling than my own instincts as a parent? Not much, I'd argue.

Now, I'm not saying that I never take the advice of "experts" - far from it. It's just that I never automatically assume that what's advocated in such-and-such a book carries more weight than my own parental instincts and common sense. You simply can't apply prescriptive formulas to something as dynamic as the parent-child relationship. Whatever works best for you and your child at any given time is the only "right" way.

In my experience the solutions we work out for ourselves are usually the best when it comes to us and our children… no matter what the experts say!