Parents Flying Blind...

One evening years ago as we were troubleshooting a situation with our children, Barb and I came up with the phrase "flying by the instruments." It hit us that parenting was often like flying a plane through dark and stormy skies with little or no visibility. A pilot couldn't look out his cockpit window and know how to keep the right course or to adjust course as needed in order to reach his destination. He couldn't see ahead. The answer for the pilot was to rely on the instrument panel in the cockpit. And to do that demanded he ignore his "instincts" or feelings. Because the turbulence of the storm could last quite a long time, the pilot had to learn that the evidence of the correct altitude and the correct course was not the state of the weather (which often remained stormy for long periods of time). Rather what gave him reliable guidance were the indicators of the instrument panel. Consider this blog my attempt to draw parent's eyes to the instrument panel that can guide them through many of the storms of raising children.

Flying Blind BY T. A. HEPPENHEIMER
In the early days of aviation, pilots learned to fly by instinct. But in low visibility, instinct was worse than useless—it was deadly.
... in the 1920s and 1930s flying in clouds or fog—flying blind—was extremely dangerous even away from airports and in windless air. Pilots by then were flying at night, by following beacon lights that marked their routes. But if an aviator could not see the ground because of fog, or lost sight of the sun amid gray daylight murk, it was almost certain that he would quickly lose control, go into a spiral dive, and crash. No one knew why this happened, but happen it did, with depressing regularity. Something about being cut off from familiar reference points made it virtually impossible for a pilot to maintain straight, level flight.

Even birds couldn’t do it. An Army flier, Lt. Carl Crane, tossed a blindfolded pigeon out of an airplane and saw it spin out of control. The bird could do no more than let itself fall with wings held high, which amounted to bailing out. That settled it; if even a bird couldn’t succeed, no pilot could be expected to fly blind if all he had was the seat of his pants. Instead, blind flight would demand a completely different approach, in which a pilot would learn to disregard his senses altogether and rely on gyroscopic instruments. Fortunately, the means to build such instruments lay at hand. Indeed, the gyro had already starred in a spectacular demonstration.