I posted this in the other thread. I think it bears repeating:
“Dr. Barbara Francis, in her critique of Babywise, states: “Research (of families) and observational studies of institutionalized children, consistently indicate that there are two types of babies who cry the least: those with highly responsive parents who respond quickly and consistently, and those babies who learn that their cries will go unheeded, and so** give up hope**”.
(bolding mine)
A baby giving up hope? That’s just so wrong it makes me want to cry
I can not imagine how cold hearted you’d have to be to ignore a baby crying because s/he is hungry.
What stuns me is how so many doctors are writing about how bad this method is, how so many babies fail to thrive under it, and yet so many people still defend babywise.
Fuck. We’re losing the war on ignorance with these people.
Please, please, I beg you do not pile onto me for this, but I’m having trouble understanding where the third parties are getting theie characterizations from. I’ve read the whole thread and looked at the links. I googled the phrase, “Growing Kids God’s Way”, from one of the links in the OP, and finally found the website for Growing Families International. I checked out their FAQ. I find nothing, absolutely nothing, about beating babies with sticks, feeding them at exact intervals, leaving infants to cry it out and so forth.
I do realize that some of the people in the links have said they tried it and it didn’t work for them, but there are also testimonials from a lot of people who love the program. Is it at all possible that the program has been mischaracterized or misunderstood? Just asking is all.
Because they believe that children are property to be controlled rather than seperate entities, or they are the kind of sheep who like “easy answers”, because they don’t have the time/desire/ability to think.
Being a parent is scary, especially for people doing it for the first time. There are thousands of quotes from authors and other thinkers that describe the “unknown-ness” of parenthood. Many parents talk about how you have to surrender a little bit (or a lot, depending on who you talk to) of control to the Universe when you have a child, and that is a terrifying proposition to certain types of people. They want to control the variables. They turn to things like Babywise, which promise maximum control and certainty. That intense, rigid structure is comforting, it gives the illusion of not having to surrender to parenthood.
In the article I linked to (sorry 'bout the coding, try this one :smack: ), quotes a lactation consultant as saying;
If your dream child is one who doesn’t interfere in your life, Babywise is the book for you!
No way. These people don’t get to sue. They make their own choices and should be held personally responsible. Allowing smokers to sue tobacco companies was a horrible precedent.
Now when some of these abused infants survive to adulthood, I would love to see them bring a suit of their own (against Ezzo and their parents).
Flutterby, the advice she gave on how to stop your kids becoming overweight was actually pretty good, even if the rest of the article was complete shite. She basically said not to buy junk food or unhealthy snacks, so your kids wouldn’t be able to eat badly at home, and to give them appropriate portions, not whatever they wanted.
I totally don’t get childcare based on routines set down in a book. When I was a kid we didn’t have naps after the age of about 2, we got up at 9, and went to bed at 8. This allowed us to see my dad in the evenings, and allowed my parents (neither of whom are morning people) to have “alone time” late at night and in the morning. My mother’s friends’ kids tended to get up at the crack of dawn, disturbing the whole household, get put down for an afternoon nap when they weren’t tired, and then have an extended fight about being put to bed at 7 when they weren’t sleepy. According to all the books my sisters and I should have been horrible selfish, wilful brats. We weren’t, we had a routine, but it was based on what suited us best, not on a book.
As far as I can tell the only time you EVER ignore a crying child is when they’re having a tantrum for attention, and you have to make sure they’re somewhere safe and quiet where they can’t hurt themselves first.
Lib, first of all, I gave you exact QUOTES FROM THE BOOK Becoming Babywise and Babywise 2. Secondly, Growing Kids God’s Way is an a larger umbrella program that simply INCLUDES Babywise.
I loved (yeah, right :rolleyes: ) the part about teaching pre-verbal kids to “sign”. How is it possible that kids who can’t even talk yet, have fine motor skills?
Not to defend anything else this idiot proposes, but toddlers can indeed learn basic sign language before they are physically able to speak. The brain is able to begin learning and producing language before the throat can produce the necessary sounds.
Cool. But can they use signs and gestures with the consistency that Ezzo demands? There are accounts in some of the links provided of toddlers being stuck in their high chair for up to 4 hours because they won’t sign “All done now”. According to the experts, children at that age don’t have the developmental capacity to understand the cause/effect of signing that phrase and being allowed to leave their high chair. Imagine all the time that is being wasted in the chair when that child could be out exploring and learning about the world!
That is indeed idiotic and cruel. Language, whether spoken or sign, should be a spontaneous and fun activity for the kid, not an opportunity for petty power games.
Ah, but were you ever forbidden to go to bed if you were tired before 8 o’c? If you were hungry before feeding time were you allowed to eat something? Was dinner rigidly on the table at a set time, and taken off at a set time?
There’s a difference between having a routine, and having a regime.
You know, I spent about half an hour looking over this thread and some of the links. I was concerned, because I disagreed with some of the blanket statements made in the thread about not attempting to enforce a nightime sleep schedule for children.
And then I hit that ezzo.info and the accompanying links. All that well-meant research and concern flew out of my head in a white hot rage.
Ezzo needs to be shut the hell up before he harms more children. I, for one, will volunteer the crawl space in the basement as a holding pen, where I can put him on a strict feeding/sleep schedule and pinch him if he does something I don’t like. Unfortunately, I don’t trust myself enough to not do more vile things to him.
Ezzo is also fond of Suing his detractors, plagarizing, and lying through his teeth. He’s been rejected by his own churches. He’s a very, very bad man.
Which thread? If you’re referring to the OP, IMO that comment was more about forcing a counterintuitive feed/wake/sleep cycle on babies, expecting infants to sleep through the night when they are not developmentally capable of that, and leaving them to “cry it out” almost 100% of the time. Those are the problems with Ezzo’s technique. I am planning on hippy-dippy touchy-feely attachment parenting and even I advocate a regular sleep schedule, once my child is able to understand about sleep cues. But, as you discovered, there is a world of difference between establishing a bedtime routine and raising a child with anxiety and attachment disorders because they were left to “cry it out”.
My mom’s wisdom is that children under 2 years just aren’t capable of manipulating you - if they ask for something, it’s because they need it. Ezzo pits parents against their children. He attributes cognitive abilities to infants and toddlers that they simply don’t have.
Lib, first let me apologize for my earlier outburst.
Now, I will address your post.
If you look at the link I provided to the Babycenter article, you will see that Ezzo frequently contradicts himself.
I am going to re-post some of the links Jar used below, and give you an idea of how they are relevant to this discussion.
He has recently released a new addition of his book where he toned down the Handy-esque faux medical advice about ADD and ADHD being caused by “bad parenting” (can’t find my cite for this, I’ll dig it up when I have more time).
Here is a Christian-biased, fairly balanced article on the Ezzo method. This is what happened when Ezzo saw the article (synopsis: Went apeshit that it wasn’t 100% glowing and starting talking shit). Why am I showing this? To demonstrate that Ezzo is pretty slippery when it comes to standing behind the facts of his “parenting advice”. I doubt that GFI online would, either, which probably explains why you couldn’t find anything objectionable there.
Here is a review that quotes Ezzo’s corporal punishment advice. It is negative, but it directly quotes the primary source as advocating using an instrument to strike children.
Here is another critical report. This one is probably the most reliable, as it has multiple, specific quotes from the books, for using corporal punishment on babies and ignoring their cries. It’s a three-parter, with links to the other two parts at the bottom of the page. It provides a compelling case for the argument that babies who are “successful” with the Babywise regime fall inside a bell curve, and Babywise is dangerous because it consistently presents itself as appropriate, nay, essential, for ALL babies. It is also this link that has the account of the child who developed infant anorexia as a result of being Babywised.
If you really want to know the real deal, I’d go to the source: check On Becoming Babywise out of the library and see what you think. Personally, I wanted to toss my cookies. Lucky I’m not 9 months old, or my mom would pinch my hand for that.
Well, Babywise aside, it is certainly possible to teach babies simple signs such as ‘milk’ and ‘more’ and maybe ‘sleepy’ (and you can buy whole books about teaching your baby to sign, which some people use very satisfactorily). In my case, I’ve been trying to teach my 10 month old the sign for ‘milk’ now since she was about 5 months old and I can’t swear she’s ever used it deliberately. And to this day, after 10 months of living with her, I still cannot always interpret her cries, and we practice a variety of attachment parenting, and never ever leave her to ‘cry it out’, cry herself to sleep, or whatever you want to call it.
I think Ezzo’s program does create “well behaved” kids. Hell, my own parents created “well behaved” kids, but I can tell you this much - I was incapable of making decisions on my own until I was well into my 20’s, and had serious problems with perceived authority, specifically being unable to stand up for myself even in the face of an authority being plain wrong, until about then too (when I spent 3 years in counselling after I cut myself with a box-cutter at work following a clash with my employer).
I am not convinced that ‘well behaved’ kids are ‘well adjusted’ kids. It merely creates kids you get glowing praise for in public, and who go bugshit crazy once they hit the “real world”. Or else, you get adults who will follow their leader obediently, no questions asked…do we really want that? I know I don’t.
“Babywise” has about as much to do with the Bible as … well, I can’t think of a clever analogy. But don’t be fooled that this abuse is somehow Biblical, even if the leaders cherry-pick verses from the Bible to support it.
And if people are coming out with truly Biblical diets – like Kosher, or the one where you can only eat food available in 1st century Palestine – why should you be pissed? They’re no worse than many of the other diets being touted everywhere. No one’s forcing you to follow them.
But I agree that this Babywise stuff is dangerous, evil crap.
NOTE: This is not a defense in any way of Ezzo or Babywise.
I agree that from birth to about 3 months, it is impossible to spoil your child or to get them to learn anything about a sleep schedule. However, soon after about 3 or 4 months, an infant can, and does, learn to fall asleep by themselves. I would recommend Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child as a good starting point for a discussion of the sleep habits of infants and children. It points out that your are not a horrible parent if you let you child cry at night (assuming it’s not hungry or needing a change) in an effort to help the child learn how to fall asleep by themselves. Constantly rocking, singing, or holding a baby to get them to fall asleep can actually make it harder for the older infants to develop healthy sleep habits. Some of the hardest nights I’ve spent as a father were sitting in my room listening to my child cry in the next room, and not going in to comfort her. It’s extremely difficult. But also very helpful and necessary. I don’t think I was doing a disservice to my child, actually, I think it helped both of my girls to develop better sleeping habits.
I would recommend the book for any parent. It’s well-researched, reliable information, and was a world of help for me and my wife.
Of course none of that changes the fact Ezzo and Babywise is seriously fucked up.
