While my hand heals, I’ve asked a few of my favorite bloggers to pick up the reigns. This week’s post is from Guerrilla Mom. 

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I
was racking my brain for what to write for my Ask Your Dad guest post.  Then
I remembered that you have a new baby on the way.  So I thought, Great! I’ll give him some parenting
advice!  I know you have already
done this once before, but heck- there are things that we all fail miserably at
the first time around, right?  I don’t know what your particular failures
are – so I’m just going to project.  Mine is sleep training.  My
child will be two in November, and I still have absolutely no idea what his
bedtime is.

Shoot.  

Maybe I shouldn’t be giving advice on this subject.  It is an important
one though- so in lieu of having you fail in my footsteps – I picked you up a
copy of  Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy
Child.

It’s five hundred pages long.

Okay, so I edited the cover a little.

Satan
himself wrote it, obviously, because who else would write this advice opus for
a NEW PARENT?  Five hundred  pages.  When I was a new parent I
barely had time to read the dosage instructions for children’s Tylenol. 
Since I don’t think new parents like gifts from Satan, I will be abridging it
for your swift reading pleasure. This is my gift to you and your wife.

Guerrilla Mom’s Abridged Version of Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child

Put your child to bed,
and then ignore him for the rest of the night.

Were
you expecting more?  Nope – that’s it.  Put your child to bed, and
ignore him for the rest of the night.  That is the recurring lesson in
this book.  500 pages just to impart the crappiest advice known to parenting. 
Which brings me to the real subject of this post – no one knows what the hell
they are doing, and no two children are the same.  

When
it comes to parenting, all that we can do is trust our intuition, love our
children, and do our best.  There is no book that can teach us any of
that.  It may seem counter-intuitive for a woman who is attempting to make
a career out of writing about parenting to say those words – but oh well.

You
are a great parent.  It is evident in your anecdotes and the way to talk
about your family.  It was made abundantly clear by the amazing note you
wrote to your “hypothetically gay son.”  So when your hand heals
up,  please keep on doing what you do.  And if you have some sleep
advice for me, let me know.  I’ll trust a real dad over some doctor and
Satan any day.

You
can check out more of Maria’s awesome mommy blog, or follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

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P.S. Dad here again. The hand is healing a little each day. I plan on being back in full force after next week! Thanks for sticking around!!