The Rules of Parenting, 3rd Edition

RULE 1

Don’t put them on a pedestal

I have a friend who thinks of her own mum as pretty much the perfect parent. Her mum was enormously patient, kind and gentle; she never really got cross, she always had time to listen, she guided from the background but was never controlling, and so on. My friend loved and respected her mum and vice versa. Sounds absolutely great, doesn’t it? Well it was, until my friend became a parent herself. And then? Uh oh.

You see, my friend discovered that she just couldn’t replicate that relationship. And that was a massive shock. Her children are lovely but they are very different from how she was as a child. So she inevitably treats them very differently from the way her mother treated her. She knows she’s not being ...