The self-taught parent

It can be very impressive to hear that someone is self-taught. An artist, say, or a musician. Wow, the dedication that must take, to pick up a book of chords and learn how to play classical guitar.

It can also be alarming. When the term is applied to brain surgeons, say. Do you really want to entrust your brain to someone who has picked up a dusty volume in the secondhand book store, or learned all they know from watching hospital dramas? Especially if they’re responsible for something really, really important. Like the emotional, physical and spiritual development of children.

Oops. Come to think of it, I learned all my parenting chops from a couple of now dog-eared volumes and chats with my mother’s group mates between the slippery slide and the swings.

How else do you learn how to be a parent? From your own parents, I suppose, but for most of us our parents fall into one of the following categories:

a) dodgy (didn’t do a great job of raising me so I sure as heck don’t think they’re much of an expert);
b) dated (know their stuff but haven’t been on the firing line for 20-odd years, since it was considered wise to put gin in baby’s bottle);
c) distant (in our increasingly mobile society, many of us don’t have mum and dad close to hand when we have children of our own); or
d) dead (one of the prices you pay for having children in your thirties is that your own parents might not be around).