Good parenting is a skill. And skills are learned. Nature doesn't supply you with them; they're developed over time with practice. Learning to be a better parent is largely about learning appropriate, time-proven parenting skills.

But remember, while general parenting principles apply to most children-and those principles are shared in this book-what works for one child may not work of another. Children are individuals. Your second child may be nothing like your first, nothing like his playmates and nothing like his cousins. With that said, there are some common mistakes that almost every parent makes. This book was written to help you avoid them.

One of the biggest mistakes parents make is to beat themselves up because they haven't been perfect. Stop! Each of us does the best we can given our own childhoods and the level of growth from which we are currently operating. Few parents deliberately try to damage their children's psyche.

Most of us do it because we are so wounded ourselves. If there is one recurring theme throughout this book it is "Parent heal thyself." Work to understand yourself, to eliminate your own inner pain first. Then, you can help your child become whole as well.

While it isn't my intention to inflict guilt, it's undeniable that many types of mental illness can be traced to poor parenting skills.. In The Road Less Traveled, M. Scott Peck, says that the severity of a person's illness is often determined by the severity of parental deprivation experienced in childhood and by how early in life it occurred.

If an infant experiences poor parenting in the first nine months of life, he may develop a psychosis, which is almost impossible to totally cure. Character disorders may form through poor care between nine months and two years of age. (The infant received at least adequate care.) Neuroses are thought to develop due to poor parenting skills between the ages of two and six.

While Dr. Peck agrees with this basic view of mental illness, he believes poor parenting in the later years of childhood-in the teens-also can lead to mental illness. But the reverse is also true: good parenting in the teen years can help heal wounds that may have been inflicted in childhood. In other words, it's never too late to become a better parent. Most parents say they love their children. But what exactly is love? Dr. Peck defines love as "The will to extend oneself for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth."

Undeniably, there are times that parents must "extend", that is take an action that makes them feel uncomfortable, to help their child mature and grow.

Sometimes that means denying a child something he or she wants. It means setting boundaries of acceptable behavior-and imposing consequences when those boundaries are violated. Never set a consequence and then renege. Always follow through. Once your child knows that you can be manipulated into changing your mind, your authority has been undermined. (On rare occasions this can be modified, but tread carefully.)

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