In my pre-baby reading binge, the book that still stands out in my memory a dozen years later is Penelope Leach. Granted, my DS failed to behave like any baby in any book we ever found
. However, what that book had was long chapters talking about different types of baby temperament, and what were likely to be the greatest needs of such children - AND different types of parenting temperament. Most importantly, she talked about how to deal when the parent your child needs is not the parent you naturally want to be. It made a huge impression on me, and the idea helped me deal with the vast disconnects between the babyhood I envisioned with DS, and the one I had.
Maybe someone on the board can suggest a similar resource looking at tweens and teens? Even reading Leach at this late date might have some use in helping re-frame the problem. The baby stuff is obviously meaningless for a 10-year old. However, thinking about how to consciously recognize the disconnect between the way we want to parent, and the parent our child needs, and building strategies to bridge that gap - that is a struggle many of us work on continually.
