Questions to ask yourself … to be a more confident parent
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Emily Oster, parenting guru and professor of economics, offers advice on finding your way as a parent. One thing that often distinguishes whether advice is helpful is if the person giving it is in any position to judge. Most advice is data combined with your preferences, so someone who doesn’t have those is rarely able to help you make a decision. The closer someone is to you, the more likely they share some of your values, so there are people – such as your parents – where sometimes you want to listen, and sometimes you don’t. Then there are strangers on the internet, people at the park – ask yourself: “Why would I be interested in what this person thinks?”.
When it comes to activities, this question is helpful. My kids were jerks when learning to swim – screaming, telling me they were going to drown – but I decided I had to do this because it’s a life skill they need. Similarly, sometimes you do have to go to a family event even if you wish you could lay around in your pyjamas. But there are things you don’t have to do: go to mummy-and-me music class, send your child to preschool, do athletics. Ask yourself: is this good for my kid, is this good for my family, would it be interesting to try? There are a lot of reasons to do something, but “I feel I have to” is rarely a good one.
A lot of the claims you see are driven by correlation, not causation, so they’re not applicable. Take the negative effects on kids who consume more than four hours of television a day. Ask yourself: is it likely this behaviour is random? No. Is there likely something else going on here? Often yes. We talk about social media being bad on average for kids, but there are some for whom it will be good, and some for whom it will be especially bad, and there’s no substitute for developing a relationship with your kid where you can experiment with what works for them as an individual. That’s harder than reading a study, but ultimately it’s what you have to do.
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