"Parenting--most people say it is the hardest job you'll ever undertake....WHEN DID IT BECOME A JOB! It is, and was always intended to be one of life's cherished gifts!"

Did any of us get a set of instructions with the arrival of our new born? What is your considered opinion about the state of parenting in our culture today? How will you know if you're doing a good job--eighteen to twenty five years into the experiment? It doesn't have to be that way!

Parenting in today's culture and even yesterday's culture in fact is very hard, and we don't do it very well. Even the best of us do a pretty piss poor job of it. Very harsh words and even harsher sentiments, but you will be hard pressed to disprove them. Nearly without exception we've all grown up with a certain amount of debilitating trauma from our childhood experiences of being parented. In fact, it is so common, this trauma, that we take it for granted and bemoan the tired and trite victim stories we routinely inflict upon each other. We are the misunderstood, negatively labeled, emotionally scared walking wounded of our parents good intentions and damned if that isn't mostly true.

To top it all off, no matter how hard we try, we then visit this same behavior or it's appalling opposite on our children the first chance we get. What that means is if our parents were too strict we carry on that tradition or become so permissive as to provide no structure whatsoever.

We push, we prod, we shame, ridicule, lecture and punish. We ignore, fawn, misunderstand, expect too much and too little. We guide, teach, love, and give. Our heart aches and we worry and fear for their safety. We hold too tight or too loose and both over and under supervise. We stumble and react and our children unmercifully push every one of our buttons at seemingly every turn. We do all this willingly or begrudgingly and in the end we finally hear ourselves say as our parents did, "I did the best I could...I know it wasn't perfect, but I did the best I could."

Was it good enough? Most of us wonder many of us know it was not. In many important ways we let them down and we wished like hell that we could have a "do over". Well, here's your chance and the good news is its never too late.