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“The things I wish someone had told me when I was a new parent.”  This is the intriguing title for an article by Elizabeth Pantley in Work & Family Life (March 2010).  Here are just a few of the many tips she offered…

Relax more and stress less.  Oh, the countless little things I stressed over during the past 18 years:  messy rooms, dirty faces, lost toys, peas not eaten.  Not a single one of them means anything to me today.  Trivial, insignificant details do in fact make up a large part of our lives.  But when these things cause too much angst, they conceal the many joys kids can bring us.  View the little things for what they are — little things — and don’t let them get in the way of taking pleasure out of your everyday life.

Be willing to break the rules.  Follow your heart a bit more often.  Loosen up.  You don’t have to be the dull, authoritative boss every single moment every day.  Break a few rules in favor of good old-fashioned family bonding.  For example, I’ve taken my teenagers to rock concerts that ended at midnight on school nights.  We’ve eaten dessert before dinner.  I don’t break every rule, and the ones I break, I do so selectively.  But when my heart says yes, I'm willing to be a little less "grownup" and more of a carefree kid.

Rest assured that your kids love you even when they hate you (because they really don’t).  Raising a child requires that you act like a grownup.  You have to tell kids no when they want to hear yes or tell them stop when they want to go....  Children are concerned mainly with their own wants.  Their unhappiness about decisions you make — and tears or anger when they are disciplined — are normal and natural.  They are not directed at you.  Your child may not thank you for your decisions now (or ever).  But those decisions are an important part of everyday life and of your child’s development as a good human being.

One of the challenges of working with young children is finding ways of working effectively with their families. In How Does it Feel? Child Care from Families' Perspectives, author Anne Stonehouse challenges the reader to look at situations in an early childhood program from families’ perspectives.  Encouraging programs to move beyond traditional parent and family involvement, this recently updated version of the book contains insights on what it takes to create and maintain effective partnerships that benefit young children the most.

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