Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way.
-Booker T. Washington
If you consider raising children a common thing, an innate talent, something not requiring extra training, then perhaps research from Oxford University will change your mind. Researchers there say, “Teaching parents better ways of bringing up children is likely to improve the child’s behaviour.” The study concludes that parents who receive parenting education “report a drop in stress levels and an increase in improved parenting skills.”
“Most parents are pretty good parents,” says Laurence Steinberg, TempleUniversity psychologist. “But I’ve never met a parent who is perfect 100 percent of the time. We all can improve our batting average.”
So while most of us try as hard as we can, it always helps to learn more. As Steinberg says, “There is no more important job in any society than raising children, and there is no more important influence on how children develop than their parents.”
By Claire Gawinowicz,
Certified Parenting Educator
