A Parent's Companion

A Parent's Companion is a book to read, absorb, and reread as childhood unfolds. It treats parents, children, and childhood as a composite: three dynamic, evolving pathways that continually separate and rejoin over many years. Each day of childhood is different from the one that preceded it and from those to come. For this reason, the book is woven around recurring relational themes that come and go, rather than focusing on an age, stage, or a narrow topic. For example, Wellness, Unwellness, and Capacity are always factors, each unpredictably rising to significance depending on the context it inhabits at present. The book draws on the author's decades of clinical pediatric practice and includes general information, although its pointers and advice lean more toward options, considerations, and reconsiderations of the themes discussed. This is a book for expectant parents seeking a sense of what lies ahead. Its subtitle signals an exploration with a pediatrician rather than dogma from an authority. It is especially for first- or second-time parents as they navigate their child's growth and development over the years. The book is written for those who encounter the same mysteries their own parents did, and it celebrates all that is normal, expected, common, and uncommon. It is a book that encourages grandparents to reminisce, knowing they once confronted and surmounted the same challenges their children now face. A Pediatric Companion is best approached as a loosely structured exploration of the parent-child relationship rather than a set of how-to solutions. Child development and parenting skills are embedded in seventeen broad underlying topics, including Helplessness, Competition, Moving, and Lying. These themes are dynamic, each affecting the family and child minute by minute. They highlight the "we're only human" successes and missteps that parents and children share as they navigate the many facets of children's growth and behavior. Opportunities to engage and learn come and go, sometimes at lightning speed. We may look back on what we missed, and at other times grope forward into uncharted territory amid scattered snafus. Parenting means planning without certainty. It brings pleasures you wouldn't want to pass up. It invites parents to think more agilely. Some chapters flesh out other topics, such as Identity, Capacity, and Anxiety, which may not always be recognized as driving undercurrents throughout childhood. How these themes interact as children grow and mature from infancy through the school years may be underappreciated or less food for thought in other parenting books. The author hopes that parents will reflect on each chapter and consider multiple perspectives as they formulate their evolving view of their child. Childhood cannot be teased apart and analyzed as though it were a single series of reproducible steps. It is meant to be savored, with its many aspects forming the grist for this book's content. Parenting cannot conform to preconceived ideas, dogma, or chance. The author envisions a calm, gentle smile emerging as parents or grandparents read its pages. When revisiting chapters, parents should feel more empowered, reveling in a sense of optimism and normality, and in the pediatrician's positivity bias. All can embrace the quiet moments with their child alongside the more active, controlled, and chaotic ones, those "What was that all about" surprises. Parents are encouraged to guide and bend, trusting the Wisdom of the Child and the Savvy of the Adult as both mature in tandem and aim for the joyful fulfillment of parenthood.