Before I had my daughter, when I was still in the thick of pregnancy and imagining how blissful parenting might be, I developed a lot of ideals about how I would raise my baby. Most of these ideals, I’m not ashamed to admit came from me seeing what some parents would do – harried moms in the grocery store, dads pushing toddlers on the swings, families eating out at restaurants – and deciding who was doing the right thing and who left something to be imagined.

It’s so easy to be judgemental when you’re not in someone else’s shoes, after all. Seeing the mom with the whining child hand over the toy,  junk food or her cup from Starbucks led me into a mantra, “I will never have a child who acts like that, and if my child should act out in public, I would never reward the behavior.” When I saw families evaluating their renting choices at the video store, getting 30 seconds to pick out Mom and Dad’s flick and 15 minutes evaluating the child’s options, I saw that as the death of the parents’ identity. I was never going to be a different person, totally subservient to my child.

I read a lot of parenting books in those nine months of pregnancy, and because of them, thought I was pretty prepared. I signed up for a few websites’ email updates, such as Baby Center, and would find myself wandering the Internet, gleaning knowledge from any list I came upon, even from sources you might not expect to find knowledge. I was subscribed to or buying a few parenting magazines a month by the time my daughter was born.

Still, she took her first breath and I was suddenly aware that I knew nothing. She knocked most of those tips and tricks and ideals out of me within her first few months. I don’t know how, exactly – it might have had something to do with the lack of sleep – but suddenly, I felt as if I had no clue what I was doing.

So, I looked for new sources of information. I found positive examples everywhere, now that I had a new perspective. I found out that, gasp, it’s not just websites and books devoted to parenting the right way that would teach me the lessons I needed to learn.

Like, from my mother-in-law. I am aware that she should have been an enemy to any confidence I had in my parenting. Instead, on a crazed day when my daughter was about five months old, I asked her what she thought I should be doing differently. She said she thought I was doing exactly what worked, and that that’s all you can do when you have a spirited baby.

Like, from parent-content-created websites. It’s all well and fine to ask the experts – the pediatricians, child psychologists and dieticians – but I found the most helpful advice and came from Moms and Dads who were putting their own words into action all the time.

Like, from mommy and daddy blogs. Sometimes, all you can really do is commiserate. Others, you need someone’s different eyes to see the solution to a conflict or problem. Mom and Dad bloggers often offer a different perspective that brings new concepts to mind. For example, in blogging about my daughter’s food allergies and how they have effected her mood swings and tantrums, I’ve accidentally given a few parents the idea to have their child tested for wheat allergies – and at least one has tested positively for celiac’s disease – an often silent, very damaging condition.

So, I’d like to know, where do you look to for parenting cues and why?