You cannot have a manual for parenting, but you can have troubleshooting

I believe that while you cannot create a manual for parenting, you can create a "troubleshooting guide." It would be a collection of failure cases—things that lead to failure if you do them, or things you might try if a certain situation arises.
When I was assigned to a laboratory in college, I started doing research using a machine called high-performance liquid chromatography. However.

Even when my seniors taught me, it made no sense, and reading the instruction manual was completely baffling. I was holding my head in my hands, wondering what to do, when a professor handed me a book titled "The Reality of High-Performance Liquid Chromatography." It was a book that introduced various cases that didn't go well and summarized how to resolve each of those troubles.

It covered troubles that tend to occur when using this machine, explaining that this, that, or the other thing could be the cause, how to identify the cause, and how to resolve each one, making it clear how to handle them. Thanks to this book, I was able to understand the mechanism of the machine.

I gained incredible inspiration from encountering this book. "I see! I have been searching for a manual for parenting, but instead of looking for such a dream-like thing, couldn't I create a troubleshooting collection instead!?"
At that time, I had been running a cram school for four years, but I was struggling with how to guide the children.

I read various books and looked for a manual on how to raise children, but nothing resonated with me. In reality, they were not useful. Children have their own personalities, and the faces they show and their temperaments change from time to time. It is almost never the case that they react exactly as the manual teaches. I felt that a manual for parenting might be impossible.

When I asked my father, an expert in guiding children, for tips, he said, "Be flexible, observe the children well." No, if it were that easy, I wouldn't be having such a hard time! Or rather, how am I supposed to be flexible! How do I observe them! My father's advice was too abstract for me at the time and didn't resonate.

However, the idea that "I should just create a troubleshooting guide" became a major breakthrough. Among the books I read at the time were Kazuo Aibe's "Problem Children Are Created by Problem Parents" and "The Seeds of Delinquency Begin at Age Three." Mr. Aibe was someone who did counseling at a juvenile reformatory. So, he was, in a sense, an expert on "parenting failures."

Therefore, at first, I thought, "What's the point of learning about failure? If you don't succeed, it's meaningless, so you have to learn from success." But as I read on, hypotheses kept popping up, like "I see! So this is the mechanism that undermines a child's motivation! If so, I should take this action!"

This was a phenomenon that never occurred when I was reading success books. Success books only write, "I did this, and then it went well," and the mechanism of the child is completely unclear. In fact, even if I applied the same thing to other children, it didn't work at all. The children are different, I, the practitioner, am different from the author. Everything is different.

But strangely, there is no mysterious failure in failure. It is similar to Manager Nomura's saying, "There are mysterious wins in victory, but no mysterious losses in defeat." There is always a reason. And if you can identify the reason, you can guess the hypothesis of how to deal with it. It was a strange discovery that there is no mystery in failure.

From then on, I stopped reading parenting books that claimed success and started scouring books about how people faced failure cases that didn't go well. A manga that I read when I was young and found very helpful was "Kasei no Hito" (The Judge of the Family Court). It depicts not only underprivileged families but also cases where children become troubled despite being in well-off families. And.

It depicts how the protagonist, Judge Kuwata, and his colleagues identify the issues the children are facing and deal with them. By reading those, I gradually came to understand the mechanism of a child's heart.
Also, the failures I experienced myself were accumulated as data. "What should I have done at that time?"

I collected many failure cases and thought about hypotheses for how it would have been better to deal with each one. While working on creating such a troubleshooting collection, I gradually became able to do what my father called "observing children and being flexible."

Since I had various failure cases in my head, I could guess, "This might be close to that," from the failure cases in my mind regarding what kind of issues the child in front of me was facing. Then, I could observe from the perspective of whether that guess was valid, and if it was different, I could compare it with other failure cases, which gave me a viewpoint for observation.

Also, I was able to be humble, thinking, "I am still inexperienced, so it might be a failure case I don't know," and I became able to observe what the differences were from the failure cases I knew. Then, I would think, "It's similar to this failure case I know, but it's different here. If I take that difference into account, the solution might be around here."

I started to come up with flexible hypotheses. Just as I was no longer afraid of handling expensive machinery thanks to reading the troubleshooting guide, in parenting as well, by learning many failure cases, I could guess what would likely be a good way to deal with things and come up with hypotheses.

That is why the parenting book I wrote is in a Q&A format. It is not a parenting manual but a troubleshooting collection. It is a collection of hypotheses that if such a troublesome thing happens, this and that might be the cause, so if you try this, it might be solved.

I have consulted with parents who were stirred up by exam fever many times, but surprisingly, they only read "success books." And ironically, the parental responses recommended by success books are often typical of the "bad examples you shouldn't do" introduced in failure books. I wonder, why on earth are you recommending that!

Of course, there are cases where things go well. But that is similar to the story of "waiting for a rabbit by a tree stump." One farmer who saw a rabbit crash into a tree stump at full speed and die stopped farming and kept watching the tree stump, waiting for a rabbit to crash into it again. The path recommended by success books is a narrow path with a probability close to coincidence.

And in failure books, there are countless examples introduced where the rabbit never crashed into the tree stump even though they stared at it, and the household finances collapsed, leading to terrible situations. If you read failure books, you can learn that the methods recommended by success books are supported by coincidence, and that the probability of things actually getting worse is high.

Parenting is similar to riding a bicycle. You can ride a bicycle because the body stands vertically against the ground. And success books are like saying, "If you stand the bicycle straight and vertical to the ground, it won't fall." However, a bicycle always tilts to the right or left and tries to fall. It never stands straight.

So, what do you do? While moving forward, you move the handlebars to the right and left, constantly correcting the tendency to fall, and that is the mechanism that allows the bicycle to stand "roughly" straight. In other words, the bicycle is always trying to fall. It only avoids falling because you move the handlebars to cover that.

In other words, riding a bicycle is a series of failures where it is "always about to fall." It only manages not to fall by making adjustments to that. Parenting is the same; you are always failing, and you only manage to keep standing by continuing to make adjustments to that. Just as a perfectly straight vertical bicycle is impossible,

parenting is also a process of maintaining a standing state by making adjustments while constantly swaying left and right, in a series of moments where you are always about to fall. In other words, parenting might be something that can only be learned from failure. I think it might be an activity that assumes failure.

To learn how to ride a bicycle, "first, keep in mind that you might fall, and then just try it." Parenting is also something where you accumulate various failures, but while being careful not to make fatal ones, you make adjustments, sway left and right, and while correcting, you can "move roughly straight." Isn't it something like that?

I think there is far more benefit in learning from failure than from success in parenting. You can only learn success from success. You don't even know how wide the path of success is. However, when you learn from failure, the outline of the narrow path called success stands out. Failure fills in the outside of the outline. This is something you cannot do if you only learn from success.

When you are learning from failure, you also come to understand that "up to this point is okay." You can also see the strength of the child themselves. You also come to understand that there is a strength in children that compensates for the shortcomings of adults. You also come to understand that it doesn't go well because parents interfere unnecessarily, and that you shouldn't get in the child's way.

It becomes clear from failure cases that not a few failures are caused by "unnecessary interference by parents." You can learn from failure cases that how to step back is also important in parenting. It is similar to how plants whose roots are constantly meddled with will wither.

For those who are parenting, I recommend reading failure books rather than just success books. I think you will have surprising discoveries. Humans are strange creatures who can learn more from failure than from success. It is the same as when you see someone having trouble operating something and you think, "I wish they would do it this way," and you want to say, "Let me try."

Humans, strangely enough, seem to have a mechanism where when they see failure cases, hypotheses like "Isn't this the cause? If so, wouldn't it be better to do this?" keep popping up. Moreover, that hypothesis-creation ability is applicable. You become able to demonstrate the ability to apply it to various cases.
I recommend failure books.

I will introduce a few recommended failure books.
Kazuo Aibe, "Problem Children Are Created by Problem Parents," "The Seeds of Delinquency Begin at Age Three"
A.S. Neill, "Problem Parents," "Problem Children"
Jinpachi Mouri and Osamu Uoto, "Kasei no Hito" (The Judge of the Family Court)
Aya Saito, "Mother as a Curse, Daughter as a Prison"
Tsuyoshi Oshikawa and Masakazu Suzuki, "Parents Who Say 'Please Kill My Child'"
Naoko Narita, "The Disease of Highly Educated Parents"