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Parenting author, parent, expert, credentials please?

September 1, 2010 — 12:03 pm

Christie Barnes, author of The Paranoid Parents Guide…with my book coming out today, and reviews and articles showing up everywhere, I rely on the reviewers and interviewers to tell who I am and where my knowledge comes from.  Some writers actually omit that part so I want to fill in the picture.

The book represents over 5 years of research and statistical analysis.  I researched and then I consulted experts.  Experts tend to be knowledgable in only their field (which they can promote to the exclusion of other issues perhaps more of concern).  But we love experts–but understand we need to put their area of expertise into a real world priority list.  After confirming data with experts, I went to national and international health and child safety policy makers to confirm that I had gotten the priorities right and that I had selected the best, authoritative surveys and statistics (there are a lot of corrupt or biased surveys and statistics out there that sound very convincing).

I am a writer, and a mom of triplets now seven and a tween girl, but I earned my parenting credentials by full-time high-level research, rigorously verified.  (And as for being a mom, unlike most parenting experts who aren’t parents) you know  I love my kids so much that this was not research that I was going to mess up.)

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CBarnes

Who writes parenting books?

August 31, 2010 — 12:16 pm

The majority of parenting experts are often not expert parents.  Actually, the authors of most parenting books have no kids.    That isn’t to say there is necessarily anything wrong with that.  They may be dynamite writers who research brilliantly.  I am working with several journalists now who don’t have kids who quote me as an expert in my area and as a parent with ‘in the trenches’ experience.  Great research is the key for any parenting author, with or without kids.

Parenting experts and expert parents. Today we parents feel that we have to be experts in everything so we don’t make the one crucial decision that will ruin our kids future forever.  And sometimes life gets so demanding, it seems that every decision is all important.  So where do we start to become expert on everything…parents are up all night checking WebMD, researching car seats, plastic, asking questions like ‘does my Kindergartner need Mandarin (Chinese, not the oranges) to get into Harvard?’  

We are so intelligent, we know everything but we lose perspective.  So when we take advice we need to keep in mind where the information comes from and who, so we can put that advice into the proper perspective that we can lose. 

I may be a so-called parenting expert now, but I will never be an expert parent–I live in the real world–but I can try to be a smart, sensible parent with the common sense I relearned from becoming an “expert”.

Do you read parenting books, do you seek advice from friends, from the internet?  Do you do what your parents did?  Or the opposite?

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CBarnes

A paranoid parent now but I ran around Rome alone at 15

August 26, 2010 — 5:03 pm

How did I become a paranoid parent?  Although I am a recovering paranoid parent (I should be having written the book), how did I go from being an adventurous but sagely sensible teenager to a worrier. 

We need to step back and look at ourselves as teens.  Were you a timid teen?  A wild teen?  What kind of parents did we have to become independent young adults and how did we get so worried.

My mother was a housewife, former kindergarten teacher, married to a banker.  Her dreams for me were to go to college, become a kindergarten teacher and marry a banker or doctor.  She actually flew me out from Mount Holyoke College one weekend to date a bank president at the Country Club dance.  (I was a disappointment).

My dad told me I could do anything that I wanted to (if I put in the work.)  I got straight A’s, watched too many spy movies and oldies like Gidget Goes to Rome, and at fourteen, babysat my way to $750 and a trip to study French in Paris via two weeks in Rome.  So just turned fifteen, I was roaming the streets of Rome with eighteen year old friends, unchaperoned (the chaperone got drunk on the plane and had a week hangover), 2 AM with some Italian boys, eating pizza in the alley behind Rome’s most chic restaurant. The Roman socialite ladies had cheetahs on diamond leashes…it was the musical NINE only real.

By the time I was 22, I had been to Europe 5 times, lived two summers in New York City on my own, and finally got a (no pay) apprenticeship to learn how to direct theater at the Royal Shakespeare Company in England, met my husband (a fairly famous writer) and had four kids. 

When I had the children, I became a parent who worried too much.  I now live in a Denver suburb with my triplet seven year olds and tween daughter and two dogs.  We do travel a lot and I expect my kids to cope.  But I was really worried about everything and I had come to believe that meant I really loved my kids.  The more you worry, the more you love.   NO.   I wrote the book and I am okay now—if you worry about everything or just a little, I hope that thinking about how you got to be the parent you are now can help you have fun with your kids.

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