October 29: Evaluating Parenting Resources

Last week I gave a talk to a group of parents about helping children build skills to manage stress and worries. During the Q&A at the end of the presentation, a parent asked a question about a topic that has been dominating her social media feed. This question reminded me of the many conversations I have with parents about how to evaluate parenting resources that they find online.

There is a staggering amount of content about parenting available to caregivers including books, articles, podcasts, social media accounts, and subscription services. The sheer volume of options for obtaining parenting advice can feel incredibly intimidating. That sense of feeling overwhelmed can be magnified by a mistaken but understandable feeling that one is supposed to consume an endless amount of content in order to fully optimize parenting decisions at every moment. In fact, this goal is neither realistic nor desirable for busy caregivers.

While it is beyond the scope of this newsletter to provide specific guidelines regarding how much and which types of parenting content  each caregiver should consume, I thought it would be useful to offer some general advice about how to evaluate parenting resources. Ideally, the goal is for parents to obtain information from professionals with specific training in child development who promote evidence-based strategies.

As you are evaluating parenting content, consider the following questions:

• Does the person you are following have training in child development? Or is the person offering information simply based on their own personal experience?Remaining aware of the background of an individual offering parenting advice can help caregivers make informed decisions regarding when to take information at face value and when to check-in with another trusted source, such as your child’s pediatrician or school counselor.

• Does the style of presentation from this resource feel supportive of your parenting experience? Or, after consuming this content, do you consistently feel worse about yourself as a caregiver? If consuming content from an author or influencer leaves you feeling disheartened or discouraged, I’d consider seeking information from other sources. Ideally, parenting advice should feel helpful, actionable, and realistic. Even if a consultant has a large following or is popular amongst other parents in your community, if that person’s content regularly leaves you feeling hopeless or less-than, I’d recommend seeking advice elsewhere.

• Does this content acknowledge nuance? Or are parenting decisions presented as either all good or all bad? I encourage you to be skeptical of approaches that offer a binary approach in which all parenting choices are presented as either completely right or totally wrong. Parent-child relationships involve a complex interaction of so many different factors.

• Does the content seem unattainable or too good to be true? Parenting can be messy and imperfect, and it’s important to keep in mind that your relationship with your child is built over many years of interaction and is not defined by any single moment. Parent-child relationships inevitably have moments of coming together and feeling close as well as moments of rupture or disconnection. Challenging interactions, which may not be represented on an influencer’s feed, provide opportunities for parents to model the importance of repair and forgiveness.

In summary, please keep in mind that there are many different ways to be a caring and effective parent. We know from research about parenting style that an approach that balances connection and structure is associated with many positive outcomes. Depending on the age, developmental stage, and temperament of your child, this balance of warmth and clear expectations can take many different forms and can look many different ways.

Finally, if you are seeking useful parenting advice about a particular topic, I encourage you to ask your child’s pediatrician or school counselor for recommendations.