I just wanted to point out, regarding the first quote that Lib provided, that even though it sounds reasonable enough, it still contains some really bad advice. It says in there that a normal interval between feedings is between 2.5-3.5 hours, and that there are special times that you may want to go sooner than that. This is incorrect; useless at best, and actively harmful at worst. I have no experience with bottle-feeding, so I can’t say how a schedule like that would work for a bottle-fed baby. But I know that with breastfed children anyway, their “schedules” vary on sometimes a day-by-day basis as they grow and their nutritional requirements change. Also, 3.5 hours between feedings is a pretty lengthy interval for a young infant, although I don’t know what age range that quote was referring to. I’d also point out that when babies experience growth spurts, they tend to want to eat very frequently, sometimes every hour or even more, including during the night. This lasts for a few days to a week, until the mother’s milk supply catches up, and then the frequency of eating slows down again for awhile. Someone who thought that their child should only be eating every so often and was following one of these “train your child early” philosophies might decide to continue to feed their baby every couple to three hours, even though the baby was hungry earlier, and as a result the child might well end up undernourished. Certainly in such a case, the mother’s milk supply would eventually become inadequate. (Milk production works on a more or less “supply and demand” model.)
I take issue with any parenting philosophy that suggests there is one answer that works for every family, particularly when the answer is something that can actually be physically harmful to the child. All kids are different. Some babies might really only need to eat every three hours, and will sleep through the night at 2 months, and will never cry. Some babies need to eat every hour on the hour until they’re six months old. Some toddlers really need an afternoon nap, and some react well to a more adult-like sleeping and waking schedule. You just have to follow your own child’s cues and find out what he or she needs, and then work that into the family’s needs. It’s a balancing act, and the answer is neither, “Force your children into the schedule you want them to be on from day one”, nor “Let your kids do whatever they want whenever they want.” (Not that anyone in this thread has suggested that; I’m just expounding on my own personal parenting philosophy now.)
For the record, I think that people who follow the Ezzo regimen are smoking crack or delusional or something. How anyone could continue to follow a prescribed schedule that they read about in a book, when their child is obviously failing to thrive right in front of them, is completely beyond me. Just… completely.
Also, FYI, Whatsit Jr. was nursed to sleep every night until he was around 16 months old or so. I suppose I could have left him alone to cry in some kind of effort to teach him that he needed to fall asleep on his own without my help, but, well, I didn’t really want to. I’ve always felt a special closeness with him and I didn’t want to drive a wedge into that bond. He eventually grew out of needing to nurse to sleep, and now, at the age of 2 1/2, falls asleep on his own every night. Well, on his own with his Elmo doll, his Pooh Bear, and after a drink of water and five stories, but you know what I mean.
Anyway, I guess my point is that it’s not necessarily a bad thing to hold, rock, or sing your child to sleep every night if that’s what works for you. Personally I always kind of liked it. Of course I might feel differently if I had four other children, or the holding/rocking/singing were taking like three hours every night or whatever. But for us, it worked just fine.
Oh. My. God. I checked out that link and happened upon this gem, "To Train Up a Child," a book written by the Pearls on how to “train” your child to be “obedient.” It’s really disturbing. Among the highlights:
Pulling the hair of a nursing newborn!!! YOU’VE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!
Start training your newborn early, lest they develop their “self-centered” tendencies!
Comparing training your child to training a dog (even the “dumbest mutts” can be trained, so your kid should be able to be trained).
Comparing training your child to military training…
Train your child to be like a “submissive horse…”
Set up “training sessions…” using corporal punishment (note that “switch” and “spat” are alternitive words for HIT).
I agree with that. I totally agree with giving children healthy food, skipping the unhealthy snacks. If you read my post again I said
I’m already changing my own eating habits as my son grows and cutting back on the junk. It’s still there but nowhere near as prevalent as it was. I feel better and when my son starts eating ‘regular food’ (as opposed to pureed and formula lol) I’ll feel good that he’s eating right.
It’s just the TONE of the article that really bugged me. I agree with the idea behind it and am already working so that I’ll be doing that.
Lib in general from what I’ve heard the people who Babywise works for it works because their baby happily accepts the schedule because it’s their own natural one. The problems fall out when the baby doesn’t adapt because it’s not their schedule. (I don’t know about older babies, I’m talking more the young ones) Unfortunately some parents refuse to try anything else because they feel they have to do it a certain way and with Ezzo tying it into the parents religion… well that’s a whole guilt complex right there.
I keep meaning to see if the library has a copy just for me to look at. Maybe my mind keeps deliberately trying to forget…
I gotta agree with you there, thats not to say I can’t be a stuborn person when it comes to dicipline but I can admit that without the odd smack i would probably be a very different and imho worse person.
Oh, lola, way earlier than two. My kids had gone into full manipulation mode by about fourteen months - my daughter in particular could tantrum and pout and “hurt” to get her own way LONG before the age of two. And I don’t think its because she NEEDED apple juice instead of water. Breastfed babies have been known to refuse pumped breastmilk if mom is in the room (and take it perfectly fine if mom is out of sight) not because they NEED mom, but because they prefer mom.
The general advice is “you can’t spoil a baby under six months” But that you do need to start setting some limits beginning at six months. Just because your eighteen month old cries when you won’t give him a sip of your beer doesn’t mean he should get a sip of your beer (yes, eighteen month olds want to drink what Mommy and Daddy drink and are perfectly capable of having a tantrum to get it).
I agree that Babywise is deserving of every pit thread it can get. But there is a LONG gap between Babywise extremist and parents who set limits for a toddler or even an eight month old.
Before my twins were born, when my firstborn was about 18 months old, my oldest brother called me up and in the course of the conversation he asked me if I’d ‘spanked her yet’. And he didn’t mean a little slap on the fingers to enforce a ‘no, electrical outlets are hot!’ issue, but he meant full-out spanking. And I said no, of course not, she hadn’t done anything deserving a spanking. He proceeded to tell me about setting his kids up for a fall, so to speak…setting something within reach that they weren’t to have, and then telling them no, if you do that you’ll get a spanking…and then of course when they did do it, he spanked them. At, you know, 18 months. I was horrified then, and I’m horrified now. And I don’t think his kids are any better kids than mine, who were never spanked so young, nor in set-up situations.
I will agree that an 8 month old can pitch quite a fit if you take away something it has. What I’ve had to catch myself at sometimes is taking things away arbitrarily, simply because I’m the bigger person and I can. I have sometimes relented, and given an object back, and said “You know, I can’t think of any reason you can’t have this.” I don’t see any reason to always be right simply because I’m bigger. I think it’s perfectly reasonable to relent after thought, and to explain the reason for the relenting. “I’ve changed my mind. I think it’s okay for you to have this.” I think that’s reasonable patterning for the child to see, because that’s the way real people interact.
To the folks who wonder how any parent could buy this shit, I proffer the reason (though not necessarily excuse) of sleep deprivation combined with extreme desperation.
It’s well established that sleep deprivation interferes with self-control and judgment. It’s also incredibly unpleasant subjectively. Heck, it’s a well-known torture method. When you’re you’re trying to deal with your first baby, and you routinely get four hours of sleep out of twenty-four, nothing is as seductive as a smug neighbor or relative telling you about the magical system they found that allegedly made their 3-day old sleep for 12 hours straight.
For what it’s worth, the one person I know who tried Babywise never followed it to the letter, and abandoned it quite quickly when it a.) went against all parenting instincts and b.) didn’t work. Hopefully most people who buy the book act in a similar way.
As for me, I just put my 11 month old to sleep by lying on the floor of her bedroom so she could play, then come and cuddle, then play, then cuddle, until she was sleepy enough to be rocked in my arms and put in her crib asleep. So we’re going straight to hell, no doubt.
This is NOT what the bible advocates, though I am no longer a member of the church in which I was raised (I’m a recovering baptist :D), I am still a christian (no, NOT fundie, just ordinary human who happens to believe in God), and I do still have a halfway decent memory of bible study, and NOWHERE does it say to physically punish a tiny baby, nor to feed them (or rather not feed them) in the way advocated by this psycho.
Somewhere in the bible, (I said I have a HALFWAY decent memory, not a perfect one), there is a verse, or series of verses about obeying the laws of man and/or laws of common sense. In other words “use your brain, HELLO???” Something this idiot Ezzo is definitely not doing.
And I’d have to agree with the Biblical diets thing. Most of the reason I left the church, people just refuse to think. Drives me nuts, God GAVE you a brain, use it!!!
This isn’t a matter of being a christian, or believing in the bible. It’s a matter of him being a psychotic idiot.
And there are a lot of us who are even angrier at his type of stupid than those who don’t believe in God, or believe he exists (sorry I can never remember which one Agnostic describes and which one Atheist describes).
“To the folks who wonder how any parent could buy this shit, I proffer the reason (though not necessarily excuse) of sleep deprivation combined with extreme desperation.”
I see this book at the hospital before and after delivery some (fortunately not alot). If I see it, I usually say something like “You know, the American Academy of Pediatrics has issued a statement about some of the practices recommended in BabyWise. They are not in favor of scheduled feeds, for example.”
This is about as far as I am able to go with a patient, but I think it is important to let them know that there could be a problem with the book’s recommendations that they may not be aware of. Hopefully, using an arguement “from authority” and planting that seed of doubt will allow the family to disregard Babywise practices that ‘aren’t working’ for them.
I think it is unfair to set someone up to fail whether they be a child or an adult. For example, I wouldn’t ask “Who left this icecream sandwich on the coffee table?” when I know very well who it was (this is the key- I know the answer). I prefer to say “Kid1, you left this here, now please clean up this mess.”
Once I had a salesman in to quote me on some new windows. The kids (they were about 3 and 5) were kind of excited about having a stranger in the house and interrupted us. I asked them to ‘please go play in the living room’ or something.
The salesman then proceeded to tell me that by asking them to do something, I was “begging for compliance” when children should be obedient to an adult’s commands. Why this guy felt he could comment on my parenting decisions seemed odd to me, but I recognised it as a philosophical difference in child-rearing. I told him that I preferred to model good behavior rather than simply demand it.
I’ve been reading about Puritans in Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America by David Hackett Fischer and was reminded of this Babywise controversy. It seems the Puritans believed that since an infant was born depraved and perverse it had to go have its will broken in order to achieve salvation. After reading some of the stuff these poor kids went through, it made me wonder how New Englanders ever came out normal.
Its interesting (and really sad) that such an arcane philosophy should achieve popularity again.
I just happened to be at the bookstore today, and I stashed some Babywise books in the place I deemed least likely to be explored by susceptible parents: behind Bertrand Russell’s Why I Am Not a Christian.
MY response would have been, “I’m not paying you to comment on my parenting skills. If this is how you do business, I can go elsewhere.”
What cracks me up is the Ezzo and Pearl methods of dealing with tantrums. I was a champion at throwing them as a child, and you know what my parents did? Nothing. They simply went on about their business until I cried myself into exhaustion. I learned early on that tantrums didn’t get me what I wanted.
If they had smacked me, or screamed, I would have learned that I could get their attention by pitching a fit. Instead, I learned that I wouldn’t even accomplish that.
Well, shit the bed. I had forgotten that I’d even posted to this thread.
Now, I said that I’m gobsmacked because I am not a believer. And the biblical diets thing was a blurb on a local news program within the last few days. Said blurb of course told me that the writers of the bible had no experience as dieticians. And it wasn’t kosher, sounded primarily like some sort of veganism for Jesus thing. Pissed me off because I fervently wish that people would pay attention, always to be disappointed.
And I’m still angry as hell that there exist idiots who feel that the teachings of Ezzo are in any way shape or form to be not only embraced, but that they should buy his books.
That said, I don’t know that I agree with the actions of AerynSun. While it appalls me to no end that this SOB continues to peddle his psychosis, I wouldn’t want the tables turned, and me unable to find a book that I might want to buy because it had been hidden by someone who disagreed with it. I understand your feelings and actions, though.
I did just that a week or two ago with B’s niece. I’d been left watching four kids (two girls were B’s nieces, two boys were unrelated IIRC) on a day off from school (massive storms the day before).
One niece really wanted to play school. Really really really. I didn’t, and the other three kids didn’t. So she started pouting and screaming and flailing about a bit.
At first I tried to console her and such, but after about five or ten minutes or suggesting other stuff, I just let her be and instructed the two boys to do the same (her sister was another issue. I managed to get her to play upstairs).
After 45 minutes, maybe an hour, the tantrum niece stopped crying (it was really minor crying and flailing for the last fifteen minutes). I told her that crying and carrying on like that wouldn’t get her what she wanted.
I have no idea if she’d gotten her way with her mother, but she hasn’t since thrown a tantrum. If she does, I am guessing she will get the same response from me.
Was that the book where the that describles how they used to swaddle the kids and hang them on the wall? (Actually, it’s not as odd as it may seem. No playpens in those days. They would swaddle up the babies papoose-style, and if they needed to keep them out of harm’s way for a little while, they’d just hang them on the wall. I don’t think they left them there all day or anything. I’ll bet Ezzo would approve of leaving your baby hanging on the wall between scheduled feedings.)