A Parenting Ego Boost from an Amazon Box

I recently purchased a couple (or 4) parenting books from Amazon.

We always joke that Cooper is going to be a great Aggie because if he’s done something one time, its tradition. The words “stubborn”, “strong-willed” and “determined” often come to mind when trying to describe his personality. But it wasn’t until what I will lovingly refer to as “the bike helmet incident” took place that I realized I may need to pull in some other resources to guide my parenting style for the three-year old that has the patience of a saint without the halo to match!

So, “the bike helmet incident”… Cooper loves riding his bike. I’ve never seen him more passionate about anything in his life. One afternoon, he rode up and down the street for literally 3 hours with our neighbor friends and then cried when we had to go inside. Cooper’s bike was a hand-me-down from our next door neighbor and for the first couple of weeks we let him ride helmet free out of sheer unpreparedness. Big mistake. We took him to the sports equipment store to purchase a helmet and made a big deal about letting him pick out his very own helmet. He was really excited about it until he got home and we made him put it on. He panicked and demanding we take it off. We did, but we also made him get off his bike. That was three weeks ago and he has yet to return to his bike.

I keep thinking he’ll get over it and get back on the bike but apparently he would rather give it up for good than to wear a helmet. We’ve tried so many things to get him to ride again. I even put on the helmet myself and rode his bike around in the street to show him it was cool to wear a helmet. This turned out to be my first lesson in "you're not cool, Mom".

So this, along with his sheer terror of new situations/places/people, led me to rack up quite the shopping cart at Amazon. And, although I've only skimmed the tables of contents and read a few chapters at this point, I can already tell you they're worth every penny.

If you want to make yourself feel like a good parent, just read the table of contents of a discipline book. Hitting? Not here! Getting out of bed at night? Nope. Won't eat dinner? I don't think so!

I understand that this is not the point, but for now, I feel better about hard headedness and separation anxiety!