I NEVER give parenting advice. Primarily because each child is a different mix of baffling traits and behaviours that cannot possibly have generalised rules applied to them.

You simply have to learn each child, from scratch. There is no shortcut.

You have to go through the confusion and feelings of failure.

There is no easy fix. Sometimes people even write books about some great parenting idea they’ve had, how futile and absurd.

Having said all that, I have actually come up with some parenting advice.

It is, I believe, truly universal, a short cut and an easy parenting fix, and I’m so excited about this discovery that I may even write a book about it.

I lavished concentrated effort on my first child. I had been planning parenting strategies for years before I had children, and unleashed them all on my first born. They all failed. I had to learn parenting from scratch.

Everything was difficult. Failure was constant.

He is now a mostly delightful, thoughtful, kind, funny six year old. And I failed hard to achieve that. Really hard.

My third child has just turned two. He says please and thank you. He asks for things and tells you how he feels.

He smiles and laughs constantly.

He seems happy and balanced and almost never has raging, eye swivelling meltdowns.

And the crazy thing is, I can’t remember having done much at all to achieve this. Admittedly my brain can’t really make new memories any more, but it appears as though he is learning how to be a person, not from me, but from his two older siblings.

Which is when I had the epiphany.

My parenting advice gift to the world is this.

When you have your first child, make sure you’ve had two children first.

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