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| "Snake Oil For Sale!" |
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| P.T. Barnum (with Tiny Tim) The best "showman" of all time |
Enter Josh Freed, documentary filmmaker, and director of "The Trouble with Experts," a hard hitting expose of the big business of selling off advice. If you ask him, asking an expert to guide you as you purchase stocks, raise your kids, or buy groceries is a crap shoot, as the science behind what they say may not hold up over time.
Here's Freed explaining it in his own words...
Audio Interview:
http://www.cbc.ca/homestretch/episode/2011/09/27/the-trouble-with-experts/
Related Newspaper Articles:
http://www.thoughtsonthefuture.com/?p=146
http://www.thestar.com/living/article/1060063--q-a-an-expert-on-experts-tells-how-to-spot-the-bad-ones
So while we are bombarded with information on a daily basis, you have to ask yourself, what do we need experts for? Beyond the obvious (doctors, lawyers, accountants, and speed skating coaches), do we really need experts? If they are wrong so much of the time, why do we put so much faith in them? I'll suggest that maybe it's because we are afraid to make our own decisions. It's okay to read a few books and take them with a grain of salt, but too many of us dive right in and hand over our diets, our portfolios, and our kids to these modern day masters of illusion that are often wrong (but for the sake of their good name, you'll never hear them admit it). That's like having a friend that's never wrong and isn't shy about telling you what she thinks of your parenting skills - while her kids run around your house terrorizing your dog and destroying everything in their path. Thanks, but no thanks.
PARENTING PARANOIA
http://articles.boston.com/2011-10-01/bostonglobe/30233466_1_parenting-neglect-pregnancy
It's a choice people. We choose the advice we follow. It's a little hard to do with 40,000 parenting books on the market, but that doesn't mean there aren't some great books from which to choose- you just have to use a little common sense to read through the bullsh@# and trust the man (or woman) behind the myth (it's a saying). Yes, you remember common sense, that thing that allows you to make decisions based on a lifetime of acquired knowledge; that voice in your head that tells you you're right even though everyone is telling you that you are wrong (we'll accept intuition as an answer for this one as well); that thing that keeps you from telling your mother-in-law what you really think about her. You know, common sense, that unimportant thing you relinquish whenever you follow the advice of others blindly. It's in you, you just have to have enough faith in yourself to use it; to trust it; to own it.
WHAT MAKES A GOOD PARENT?
http://drrobertepstein.com/downloads/Epstein-What_Makes_a_Good_Parent-Scientific_American_MIND-NovDec2010-final_proof.pdfAs Andy Warhol said, everyone gets their fifteen minutes in the limelight, and maybe the current expert explosion is what he meant, but if you just brought home a baby boy or a little girl, this is also your time to shine, so don't let someone else's advice get in the way of you being the most important person in your baby's life. And don't let anyone scare you from doing what you think is right (well, after the nurses give you a brief crash course). Parenting books are great but they always seem to forget the most important lesson... every parent is the expert on their own child, and at the end of the day, you know what is best for your baby, no matter what anyone else says (except maybe child services).
And, hey, if you can't find any parenting books you like, I can suggest a blog (or two, or three) you might enjoy
ARE BLOGGERS THE REAL EXPERTS?
http://hybridrastamama.blogspot.com/2011/04/parenting-experts-beware-there-is-new.html
If you ask my honest opinion, the best parenting advice you will ever get is from someone who is going through exactly what you are, at the same time, and can point you in the right direction to the information you really need as quickly and painlessly as possible. But, that's just me. We all choose our own path to success.
- http://www.childperspective.com/mindful-parenting/who-hijacked-your-parenting-mojo/
- http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/story/9.html
- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704122904575315222129011504.html
Standing O for this Adam! Great topic. Is it worth it? Great response: Trust ourselves. All human beings are hard wired with their own GPS. When we act out of alignment we are miserable, when we act in alignment we thrive - and so do those around us. Catch is humans and their environs are as diverse as plants, so we each achieve "alignment" differently, yet experts write books for everyone - and they're always building better roads. Hello? Good news is we simply need to check our own GPS and make our own correction. As with driving, the right map (or parenting book) can help dramatically. So choose good friends to ride with and be also a good friend to yourself and others. Your readers certainly have this with you. Happy to be one of them! PS Children the Challenge by Rudolph Dreikurs is my personal fav (Decades in print for a reason!) Oak trees live long lives.
ReplyDeleteGood thing I don't consider myself an expert! I always open up my six-week parenting course making that very point. I don't think there is any such thing as an expert. If you're lucky, you will become an expert for one particular child a few years after that child has flown the coop. Much of what applied to that one will backfire with the other one growing under the same roof! There is just too much diversity when it comes to the human psyche, and the most that "experts" can hope for is to give people a couple more tools to add to their toolbox. Each parent has to choose the right tool at the right time for the right child.
ReplyDeleteMarlaine I completely agree with your comment. "Alignment," where it is deemed a good thing by the wider community, has many interlocking paths leading to it. An amusing point to make here is that even the so-called expert who finds the other experts inaccurate, may also be inaccurate in his statement about experts. We all come from a different standpoint. I don't believe any of them is wrong per-se. I DO believe that if nothing is applicable across the board even in the same household, how can we expect them to be applicable across the entire world, country, or even locality? Yet, we can expand our horizons and learn about what works elsewhere in order to help discover what works for us. Methinks that is the same message underlying Adam's piece. Read, yes. But then analyse,decipher, sift through, hold some, and discard others with no disrespect. If you haven't walked a mile in their shoes, you don't know their standpoint. I call that "informed" common-sense parenting.