Bindi Irwin Shares Her Best Parenting Advice Raising Daughter Grace, 1: 'Find Your Own Rhythm'

When it comes to getting parenting advice, Bindi Irwin says there's no shortage of it out there, but after her first year of motherhood, she's learned it's okay to find her own way.

Before the Crikey! It's the Irwins star, 23, and her husband Chandler Powell, 25, welcomed 13-month-old daughter Grace Warrior last March, "I had this whole plan," Bindi tells PEOPLE in this week's cover story.

"Like, 'This is what I'm going to do with food, and this is what we're going to do with sleep routines.' Then she was born, and everything was thrown out the window," she says.

"Now I'm like, 'If I can get her to eat vegetables at all, I'm winning.' I think every parent should know it's okay if you don't do things exactly by the book. You have to find your own rhythm."

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Bindi and Chandler — who are raising baby Grace at the Australia Zoo where they live and work alongside Bindi's mom, Terri, 57, and brother Robert, 18 — say their first year as parents has taught them so much.

"There's a lot of information, opinions and advice that you get, and as a new parent you go, 'I have to follow all this,' " and you feel a pressure to try and be the perfect parent, come up with the perfect routine," says Chandler. "But you are the world's leading expert on your own baby. So we've taken solace in that. There's a lot of great advice out there, and we've used a bunch of it, but you know better than anyone what's best for your baby."

Adds Bindi: "I think the best advice I got was the fact that you can read every baby book, you can take on board everybody's advice, but at the end of the day, you know what works for your child. And that was so freeing for me."

One thing they did not anticipate was Grace's aversion to people in clothing she's not used to.

"Our current battle is if you're not wearing khaki, Grace gets pretty weirded out," says Bindi. "Living in the zoo, where we have a family of 400 people all wearing khaki, if she sees someone not wearing it, she's like, 'You are new and different. What's happening?' I mean, I did not think to plan for that."

For more from Bindi Irwin and her family, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday.