The parenting rules seem to have changed and I can’t figure out why. We’ve ditched a few good ones, like instilling manners and respecting others. This thought has flashed through my head on more than one occasion, usually when I have made the effort to haul my family to a restaurant. There’s always one couple blithely ignoring their children as they fling spaghetti and run amok, ruining everyone else’s evening. Please people. You know who you are. Just take them home, no matter how inconvenient. I’m not saying we need to time warp back to a fifties household, where kids are polite and often not seen or heard, but perhaps it’s time to rethink those basics.

A friend told me about a New York Times article she’d read entitled “Yelling is the New Spanking!”

“Whattt?” I mustered. Oh great! Now I might as well hit them instead of entertaining the thought, as apparently yelling at them is just as bad. There seems to be no acceptable form of discipline anymore for our kids. We’re bombarded with advice about what not to do and how everything we thought was okay to do is wrong.

Like many parents, I fret about whether or not I make the right choices. But there is so much choice, that I think we’re a bit overwhelmed. The books, the magazines, the internet, they all point us to a glut of information that often contradicts itself. We see our children as Petri-dish organisms, and if we produce the right stimuli, they might magically grow into wondrous human beings. If we wade through the myriad of how-to’s and still survive with our heads on straight, we should get a prize.

“Why Time Out’s Don’t Work.” “Too Much Praise is Bad!” “Let Them Cry it Out.” “Never Let Them Cry it Out!” I could go on, ad infinitum, and so could you. This has spawned the rise of Child Coaches: like Life Coaches only with toddler-whisperer powers. I know common sense is not so common, but I don’t think I’ll pay someone else to help me guess my way through my children’s developmental challenges. I thought that was part of the deal of parenting, you make your way through it as best you can, and let the chips fall. We all know that they will go through a period of hating us for something we did anyway, (“My test scores would be higher if you’d fed me more fish!”) so perhaps we shouldn’t worry so much.

There is no right way to parent, no wrong way either. We will just have to try, some of us with coached help, others with a zeal and fervor that has led to a legion of Helicopter Parents. It is a new and interesting age of information, and we will have to see if any hard and fast rules come out of it. Can we all agree to unearth the ones we seem to have misplaced, involving manners and respect for others? Now is the time to rethink an earlier age, one of horn-rimmed glasses and hoop-ring skirts. The age of please and thank-you must return, along with the painful realization that sometimes we really just need to all leave the restaurant, right now.

BIO: Erin Macnair writes about the dark side of motherhood, as well as humorous diatribes about the world at large. One such piece can be found on the momoirproject.com, entitled The End, where she is a regular blog contributor. A lighthearted and heartwarming story can be found in the Globe and Mail Facts and Arguments archive, I Want to Divorce my Cat. Erin has an upcoming article to be featured in Reality Mom, as well as a piece for the BC Council for Families Magazine. Erin lives in Vancouver, B.C. with her two kids, two cats, and one husband.