by Anthony Tompkins

Created on: April 07, 2011   Last Updated: April 09, 2011

The answer is no. Young parents need to do one thing before they fall off the deep end and drive themselves insane buying the latest and best soon-to-be-outdated help book - breathe. As scary as it seems to be, there is a light at the end of the tunnel and the answer has two parts: Before I get to that, some background...

I do not think that young parents need parenting classes- that being said, when our first child was still a pending miracle,  if someone had offered us the opportunity to take an all inclusive, every-major-crisis-covered-in-depth manual to parenting,we may have been tempted . We were more than young, we were young, and suffering from a marked lack of support from both our families as they shuffled waiting to gossip on our impending implosion. For some people, I have just made myself the perfect example of why young parents need a guiding hand. It might be easy to imagine the psyche damaging chaos that an unarmed teen parent could do to a new baby - I was imagining all those same things as I held my wife's hair and she creatively decorated the ancient toilet in our tiny one bedroom apartment. What were we thinking?

Surprise of surprises,  our daughter not only survived, she has flourished, becoming exactly the beautiful, smart and unpredictable teenager she was meant to be. Not only that, but we have two other well rounded, insightful daughters that have managed to survive the travails of being raised by the supposedly uninformed. Were we a unique accident? No. We managed, and our girls prospered because of  a healthy dose of the two things below:

:Balance: The notion that life has come knocking expecting you to turn out perfect progeny is a chasm that no one should have to cross alone - and you won't. There are dozens if not thousands of well-wishers, most of them family, some of them just blessed with the gift of imparting knowledge that you didn't know you needed, and somehow forgot when you asked for. The thing about all this circling cloud of interested parties; they mean well. You may never need one drop of their advice, but on the one occasion when you do, they will be lifesaver. Striking the right balance between what every one else will tell you to do, and what you feel in your heart is right for the wriggling gremlin you've been gifted with is tricky, but necessary. Draw firm lines as to what you'll accept and what you won't, what's right for you and when you'll dip into the well of ancient knowledge. Again, they

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