Perfect? Nope, no idea what that means in the slightest. Am nodding vigourously at otcha.
DD is strong-willed, independent, feisty, stubborn, a slave to her age, has needs and moods and feelings that change dependent upon myriad things.
I think otcha is utterly right. I am parenting in a way that from the beginning is perceived in a certain light by some quarters. I co-slept, demand fed to natural term, never left dd to cry, had her in a sling when she was awake etc. I was told many things about dd. That she would be clingy, wilful, impossible to tame. All based upon misconceptions about how we parent.
What I challenged was the age-old 'what if they step out in front of a car or hit another child' adage like it's some kind of measure of how my parenting must fail against this rigid test. I am simply railing against this as a strange and arbitrary question. Because people seem to think that if I practise attachment parenting (and I don't, I don't follow any method I merely parent by instinct but yes attachment parenting does seem to be a similar thing to the natural path we've forged) then I don't have boundaries or never say no. It is because I have boundaries that largely the question of whether she'd run out into traffic or physically hurt another child is irrelevant.
DD explores her emotions in the same way others do. I don't spend my life distracting her away from moods or tantrums. In fact quite the opposite. I allow her her feelings, I try and give her appropriate ways to navigate her way through them. I probably do anticipate and guide her as these things happen but my life is not an ongoing attempt to avoid any behaviours. This thread has been a bit of a red herring because the distraction thing was suggested in response to a particular situation. I don't distract dd from natural, perfectly reasonable feelings. She is cross sometimes. She is sad. She is every human emotion that we are capable of having. There is no perfection and I don't pursue it.
I don't presume to judge anybody else's way of parenting. Nothing wrong with the frameworks other people work under barring wilful neglect or abuse. But sometimes people ask a question. Sometimes they worry about the way they do things and if they're 'working' and the beauty of MN is that other people have tried other ways that you may not have considered.
DD is not a compliant, biddable vision out of a Victorian novel. She is who she is and that's all I want her to be. I work hard in raising her. It's the most anxious, suffocating, difficult, exhausting time of my life and I get it wrong as often as right I'd wager. But I work hard every day. It's not a life of letting her do what she wants or never saying no. It's about a hundred times harder. I do parent. I work really bloody hard at it and when people misunderstand and think that our entire mother/daughter relationship is built upon me ignoring the world at large and its rules and dangers just to mollycoddle, pacify and pander to my dd, they misunderstand me and they insult how hard I work. As hard as every other parent I'm sure. But it's just that my way seems to be seen as the opposite of what I strive for. That I don't engage or teach dd about the world she's going to live in, that she inhabits a bubble. And it's unfair to her as well as me. I'm working towards the same end goal as the rest of you but have worked against people trying to trip me up endlessly with questions like 'aah but she can't be well behaved all the time'. Well, excuse my language but thank frick no she isn't. That's not the aim. But equally, the generalisations about how she must be ill behaved because she isn't put in time out or warned 3 times or given sticker charts are just based upon a nonsense.