Okay, so I've been at this parenting malarkey for slightly over 13 years and, while there are most certainly longer treatises on the subject than I'm going to offer here, I reckon I've seen and learned a thing or two. I'm not even going to try to impart a fraction of what I would class as the advice at my disposal. I'm simply going to make two choice observations today.
These observations are not just based on my personal experience as a parent. I'm also tapping my observation of other parents and the way they manage their lives around the minions they've produced. In a lot of cases I knew them before they were parents, and there are as many reactions to becoming parents as there are people. Further, I don't think there is any "right" or "wrong" way to parent. I will certainly think to myself "well, I wouldn't do it that way", but I won't tell those parents that they should do things the way I do. There's superior and there's different. A lot of the time stuff is just different, and you should leave well enough alone. Lots of different parenting skills work, sometimes unexpectedly.
There are a couple of matters, though, that I think are universally applicable. Here are two of them.
