I attended a conference yesterday morning at my sons’ school called, “I’m Parenting As Fast As I Can.” The head of the preschool was handing out the flyers a few days ago, and she said to me, “Erica, you’d love this. Come!” Of course I had a coffee meeting at that time, so my first reaction was “no.” But the title really hooked me in, and so I rescheduled my coffee meeting and decided I’d go (it wasn’t an urgent thing).
The conference was brilliant, and the hour flew by. The facilitator discussed the state of mommyhood today. How most of us are doing just that– parenting as fast as we can. Bombarded with literature on how to be the best possible mom, in a hurry to exposure our children to a wide array of extra curricular activities to make them “well rounded children,” impose a lot of structure so our kids are polite, achieving and well behaved. She discussed the micro-managing that many of us are doing as well… you know, the helicopter parent who hovers over the child so they can’t mess up or fail?
In fact, she recommended a book that she considers the “Dr. Spock” of today, and that has some really great tips for moms. We were coincidentally sent an excerpt of this book in today’s school newsletter, and that’s when I decided to write about this topic.
