The Secret Art of Being a Parent: Tips, tricks, and lifesavers you don't have to learn the hard way
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About this ebook
Bridget Watson Payne
Bridget Watson Payne is an artist, writer, and book editor based in San Francisco, and the author of How Art Can Make You Happy.
Read more from Bridget Watson Payne
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Book preview
The Secret Art of Being a Parent - Bridget Watson Payne
Hello, parent!
OR SOON-TO-BE-PARENT! WELCOME TO THIS BOOK!
When you’re going to become a parent, or have recently become one, the world and the people around you suddenly become extremely determined to tell you two very big, important, and seemingly contradictory things.
On the one hand, they want you to know that this is going to be the most amazing, wonderful, joyful, transcendent thing you ever have done or ever will do in your life.
On the other hand, they want to be sure to let you know that this is going to suck eggs in the most exhausting, overwhelming, daunting, confusing way you’ve ever experienced.
And you’re just like: Wait, what? Huh? Make up your minds, people! Which is it!?
And the secret is: it’s both. And the even bigger secret is: it’s neither.
Yes, being a parent alters your whole reality. Yes, your life will never be the same again. And yes, you will experience pure, unadulterated joy—the beating-heart magic of life itself. And yes, you will experience bone-deep exhaustion—along with some of the most exquisite annoyances ever known to humankind.
But here’s the thing: It will also just be life. Your life. Going along the way life does. Only now with a very prominent and very small new cast member.
And all those other parents are so busy predicting how the heavens will part the first time you see your child, or how you’ll want to tear out your own hair from sleep deprivation two weeks in, that they forget to tell you the really important stuff.
The good stuff. The useful stuff.
All the tips, tricks, and perks (yes, perks!) of parenthood that they figured out for themselves as they went along. All the knowledge parents use in their actual, real, day-to-day lives.
It’s not their fault. It’s just that this stuff becomes so ingrained, completely second nature, that pretty soon, parents forget there was a time they ever didn’t know it. But no one is born knowing how to pack a diaper bag (page 48), or how to fly on a plane with a child (page 72), or how to harness baby laughter as a natural mood elevator (page 60).
Which is where this book comes in. Practical smarts, emotional know-how, logistics and expectations, time-savers and support. Rather than reinvent the