Day 106

Something learned:

Always get a second opinion.

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to attend a talk by an author at work. The author was Daniel J. Siegel, who had written Brainstorm, which was a book about adolescent brain development. Early in the talk, he makes the claim that teenagers need to replace parental attachments with peer attachments for ideal outcomes. This happens to directly contradict the conclusion I reached after reading Hold On To Your Kids by Gabor Mate. The latter book states that a child needs to maintain a stronger attachment to their parent than their peers until they reach adulthood.

At the end of the talk, when he started taking questions, I eventually stood up and mentioned this contradiction to him. I was beyond thrilled when he revealed that he had recently had a long conversation with Gabor himself, and that they disagreed on certain points and agreed on others.

When I first became a parent, I read a number of well-reviewed parenting books. I went along building up a model of ideal parenting until I came across 2 techniques that directly contradicted each other at which point I realized that there was no single ideal model and that I needed to figure it out for myself.

Having the opportunity now to directly challenge the source of this information was very exciting, especially since while I thought that Hold On To Your Kids was a really convincing book, Daniel Siegel seemed to present a very compelling argument otherwise. Eventually, he asked me to read his book and email him what I thought of the matter after that.

I think we're conditioned to trust experts, so it's even more vital for us to understand that sometimes experts disagree. I consider it a great responsibility to educate myself and to reasonably challenge what I'm told, whether it's from my kid's pediatrician or doctor, or an accountant or financial advisor. (Sadly, it's really hard to get good help these days -- but I'm too busy to become qualified as everything I need help for...)

Today I was thankful for:

1. Getting to order free stuff from work
2. Getting a bunch of awesome free stationery at work at the grab bag shelf
3. Finding a plain shirt that fits the kid at Goodwill for $1.50
4. Finding that I still had T-shirt transfer paper leftover from 2011 in my stash
5. Putting together an awesome shirt for kid to wear to Math Day tomorrow

Looking forward to:

Someday I want to go to Germany and see Miniatur Wunderland.