Parenting an infant requires a lot of time and attention and in that first year you don’t necessarily get a lot of time with your spouse or partner. The time you do have (when the baby is sleeping or otherwise occupied) is spent “downloading”–sharing your respective days or what your child has been up to.
And in that first year there is so much to learn and discuss. There are so many approaches and philosophies about raising children and precious little time to discuss them. So what my husband and I have found ourselves doing is parenting through book discussion.
We have our own mini book club where we read and then touch base about what we have read. It makes our “download” time much more substantive.
Some of our reading has been in the realm of memoir. Because if there is anything that parents need it’s a good laugh. Two recent favorites of ours have been Elisha Cooper’s daddy-memoir Crawling and Catherine Newman’s hilarious and tender Waiting for Birdy.
In the ‘parenting manual’ department, we have gone through Dr. Sears’ The Baby Book and The No-Cry Sleep Solution. Currently we are working our way through Becoming the Parent You Want to Be by Laura Davis and Janis Keyser and Alfie Kohn’s Unconditional Parenting. We also found the DVD for Alfie Kohn’s book helpful–don’t all book group members occasionally cheat or supplement with the film version?
So far the book group approach to parenting has been working pretty well. For one, it helps us focus. I have also come to realize that I am not good enough at summarizing to read alone. Besides, discussing what you have read provides both perspective on and reinforcement of ideas.
This kind of feels like a weird thing to post on this blog, but I am personally very curious if other parents have done the same. And if anyone has any parenting books to share, please let me know!
