How do you know what's right?

There's been a lot of chatter on my various Yahoo! groups this week about doing right by our kids.

One thread hotly debates whether it's smart to read everything there is to read about attachment disorders or whether doing so makes us see emotional wounds where there are none and encourages us to over-dramatize every tear shed and every toy hurled as signs of bonding issues.

Another discusses whether it's better to let your kids sleep in your room or whether you should sleep in their room.

One mom said that if you think your kid doesn't need to be in therapy to deal with his attachment issues you probably shouldn't have adopted from China. Another wondered -- seriously, I think -- whether it hurts kids more to be adopted or to spend their entire childhoods in orphanages.

I read them all. And they all leave me wondering whether I'm doing the right thing. For example, Quinn sleeps alone in his room with no issues - he goes down easily, sleeps through the night and wakes up with a smile. But is that traumatizing him in some way? Am I doing him harm that will manifest itself down the line? If he's crying for a bottle, I ask him to calm down before handing it over. It works, but is it doing him damage? He can now stand up on his own but cries to get down; the last few days I haven't rushed right to his aid, hoping he'll learn to get down on his own. But am I really helping him learn a skill or making him flash back to times in the orphanage when he cried and nobody came?

For now, I trust my gut and Quinn's responses more than I trust posts from other parents or even books by experts. But I can't help but wonder: When it comes to parenting, do you ever really know what's right???