Mackenzie Carpenter of the Washington Post writes a thought provoking article entitled, “Clashing Data Bombards New Parents As Old-School Ideas Fall By The Wayside.”

Giving readers food for thought, Carpenter talks about parents over-reliance on parent advice. She cleverly points out how advice and parenting gurus change from generation to generation, leading us to wonder at the validity of any of it.

While I could be buying into yet another trend, I do feel that raising your children to be emotionally intelligent by using principles of emotional coaching, empathy and mirroring really makes sense. This approach individualizes parenting and puts the power back where it belongs – the parent-child relationship.

In my opinion, no one parenting book or one parenting guru can be useful unless it recognizes this individualistic approach. When we, as parents, feel in charge of our parenting it does much to reduce the anxiety of feeling like we are always falling short. Reading many conflicting books on parenting will raise this anxiety, sometimes to a feverish pitch.

I’m not suggesting that we should feel like we are always right! Parenting is a dynamic relationship in which we learn. We have to make mistakes because we are human. Let’s learn from these.

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Marsha Jacobson is author of "Boom... Boom... Boom...: A Story to Raise Your Child's Emotional Intelligence". She is a regular contributor of mychildfeels.com and you can visit her website at marshajacobson.com.