MY BAD!

Well, it had to happen sooner or later. No matter how hard we tried to keep up with all the latest in child-rearing literature, something was bound to come back and bite us on the butt eventually. Just look at how much the "expert advice" changed from our grandparent's generation to our parent's, and from our parent's to ours. I guess it was inevitable that at some point, they were going to release a study that proved we had done terrible things to our kids, despite our best efforts.

The first thing that came back to haunt me was the apple juice my kids used to guzzle, with full approval from my pediatrician. Turns out it could contribute to obesity later on. Good thing I was diluting it to half strength, just to make it go further. I've completely lost track of how many times the circumcision pendulum has swung back and forth, and of what position babies are now to be placed in when sleeping.

For the most part, these shifts don't usually shock me, but there was one recently that almost pulled the rug out from under me. Much to my amazement, new studies are turning up evidence that many criminals, murderers and sociopaths show extremely high levels of self-esteem! Now it is believed that too much of it can be just as bad as not enough, and perhaps we shouldn't have been laying on the praise quite so thick, gushing "Good Job!" every time little Harold so much as farted. Oops.