Introduction

Hello. My name is Harriet Durling Kaplan. I am the mother of two daughters, Esther and Miriam, currently ages 27 and 25. I have a B.A. in economics from Smith College and an M.Ed. in elementary education from the University of Virginia. After several years of teaching, and then of parenting, and with the help of Caroline Cunningham Eidson, I started The Peabody School, an independent school for intellectually advanced children. I was Head of School at Peabody for over 10 years, and then I served the school in various capacities until 2008 when I finally retired. Since then, I occupied myself with various pursuits until I finally hit upon two things that captured my full attention. First, I started writing a book on parenting independent and responsible children. Second, I began volunteering as an educational consultant at my local Head Start. My experiences at Head Start are beginning to inform my thoughts on parenting young children, and, therefore, my writing on the subject. Below you will find the story of how I came to be interested in parenting again many years after my children had left home to start their own lives.

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As soon as I knew that I was going to become a mother in 1987, I started reading everything that I could get my hands on about child development and parenting. I filtered what I read based on gut instinct, on my memories of childhood, and on my experiences with parents and children as a teacher and one-time scout leader. Once I actually became a mother, I took what I had learned and put it into practice. Some things worked better than others, so I kept doing the things that worked and discarded those that didn’t. The cycle of read-try-experience/read-try-experience served me well over the years, and my husband and I ended up raising two really great kids.

Recently, I completed a large writing project, and I was casting around for the next thing big thing. I mentioned this to my older daughter, Esther, and she suggested that I write about parenting. First of all, I was incredibly flattered. My daughter was suggesting that I write a book on parenting. Wow! What better compliment could a child pay to a parent?

Fortunately, I found the idea intriguing, so I did what I did when I was planning to become a mother in 1987 and before I founded a school in 1994. I went to the library. But when I read about child development and parenting this time, I did so from the perspective of a person with 27 years of experience as a parent and 20 years of experience as a teacher and school administrator under my belt.

What I have come up with is a parenting philosophy that I call “Prudent Parenting.” Prudent Parenting involves keeping in mind the big picture—what you want your child to become—while you deal with the day-to-day issues that come up with your child. My goal is to help you plan ahead so that you can promote the values of independence and responsibility and so that you won’t spend all of your energy reacting to the vicissitudes of parenting. Being proactive can ensure, to a large degree, that you spend your energy more on the positive aspects of parenting than on the negative and that, when all is said and done, you will have done your best to raise an independent and responsible young adult.