@jaynie,

The best present you can give your child is your presence. There are no shortcuts. There are no substitutions. Parenting is meant to be taxing and time-consuming.

And the greatest thing you can do with that time is to teach them how to think and fend for themselves: Logic; logical fallacies; reasoning; emotional control; fairness; empathy; facing their fears courageously; how to take risks; how to get back up when knocked down; how to live with pains and discomforts; how to constructively engage with their peers; how to win and lose graciously; and how to develop and live by an honor code.

I've spent decades studying every aspect of psychology, neuroscience and sociology for professional reasons (I'm in advertising) and personal ones (I find them fascinating). My conclusion: There is A LOT of very bad advice floating about, including in the area of parenting.

For the past number of decades, the fields of psychology and sociology have been MASSIVELY dominated by political/cultural Left Wingers ... U.S. university Psychology/Sociology departments universally poll between 95%-100% Left/Far Left. This has created a gargantuan Confirmation Bias, a fact which has been glaringly demonstrated by the "Replication Crisis."

Simply, two-thirds to three-quarters (depending upon the study) of once-famous psychological/sociological experiments ... upon which the West relied to justify the adoption of a whole host of "progressive social reforms" ... can't be replicated. Indeed, attempts to replicate them often result in findings that are opposite of what was originally represented by experimenters.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis

The scale of the problem is breathtaking and the world of psychology/sociology has been turned on its head. Most charitably, there was a lot of "motivated thinking" going on. Less charitably, a bunch of left wing ideologues were lying through their teeth so as to manufacture "scientific evidence" that would buttress their ideological belief systems.

The result are generations of increasingly screwed up kids. And, it's getting worse as the fruits of the fiction are now principals/deans, teachers/professors, politicians and mass media commentators.

As you know, I was very involved with raising my daughter and one of the things I spent a lot of time doing was tutoring ... her, her classmates and many of her friends. As such, I got an up-close look at child development from Kindergarten (age 5) through Grade 12 (age 18).

What I witnessed was often flabbergasting. The most shocking of what I witnessed involved parenting, or perhaps more accurately, the difference in outcomes between good and bad parenting models.

Contrary to the assertions of the Lefty so-called experts, the progressive "alt parenting and family models" almost always have adverse consequences.

Below is a lecture by Jonathon Haidt, a renowned social scientist, multi best-selling author and professor at NYU. I would highly recommend watching it (plus every other video on YouTube that he's created). I think you would find it insightful and fascinating.
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Quill