Parenting nirvana: You can get there from here

Not only are we painfully aware of the gap between what the current generation of parenting gurus tell us we should be doing and what we mere mortals are actually able to pull off on the parenting front: we find ourselves faced with a brave new world of parenting challenges that our parents and grandparents never could have even envisioned.

And yet we want to be good parents. Great parents, even. (I mean why settle for good if you can pull off great?)

If, like most modern day moms and dads, you’ve got your heart set on reaching parenting nirvana, but you seem to have momentarily misplaced your roadmap, this article is for you. Here are seven things you can do to be a calmer and more effective parent and—with a little luck—end up achieving some of your parenting goals to boot.

Develop your own sense of style—parenting style, that is. Don't force yourself to fit into someone else's off-the-rack ideas about what it means to be a good parent. Develop your own unique parenting style: one that feels right and fits you like a glove.

For some reason, we have a tendency to allow ourselves to be conned by parenting experts who pretend to have all the answers—you know, the ever-present smiley-faced gurus who serve up perfect sound-bites of parenting advice on TV talk shows, seemingly oblivious to the fact that their one-size-fits-all parenting advice tends to fit most kids about as well as one-size-fits-all jeans.

We would be far better off passing on the one-size-fits-all parenting advice and relying more on our parenting intuition. Most of us have, after all, read at least ten times as many parenting books as our parents ever did—and, of course, we’re amply tapped into parenting courses, parenting magazine subscriptions, and other parenting sources galore.

It’s all well and good when the experts see eye-to-eye on a particular issue, but it’s hard not to get a sinking feeling in your stomach when expert A tells you that the problem with kids today is that they’re not getting enough discipline and expert B tells you that the problem with kids today is that they’re being disciplined too punitively. What’s a (poor confused) parent to do?

What you need to do to keep yourself from being pulled under by a tidal wave of conflicting information is to make it your policy to run everything you see, hear, or read about child-rearing through your own personal parenting filter. If you use that filter to get rid of any advice that doesn’t ring true for you, you’ll save yourself and your kids a lot of needless aggravation. Besides, the experts will be long-gone by the time their wacky advice plays out. You’ll be the one left forking over the cash for your child’s therapy bills!

Switch into power conservation mode. Understand where your true power as a parent comes from—the powerful bond between you and your child—and do whatever you can do to safeguard that power source.

Parents spend a lot of time worrying about how their children behave. (In fact, according to a study conducted by the National Family and Parenting Institute, the only thing parents worry more about is the possibility that their children will develop drug or alcohol problems.) But what a lot of parents don’t seem to realize is that less can be more when it comes to managing your child’s behaviour.