BULL FUCKING SHIT In my husband’s family, more than one generation was scrupuoulsly not allowed to read anying not required by school, and sometimes not even then, lest they read something harmful or unchristian, or even worse something that disagreed with their parents. I have known parents who seem to anguish about being a good parent so they are so strict that the child is never allowed out of sight, even to age 18. Just worrying does not make you a good parent. Every one has heard nowadays of the parent who insists on their child not missing out on any opportunity and the child burns out by 8. I have seen parents who seem to be concerned about avoiding favoritism, yet indulge in it while saying they aren’t. They may even believe that they aren’t.
Well obviously genetics has something to do with it. Maybe MOSTLY to do with it. But nutrition has to have some effect - the essential fatty acids in breastmilk (only recently imitated in formulas such as LIPIL) are necessary for optimal physical brain development. Which is not to say that brains won’t develop on all kinds of foods - they will, humans are resiliant - but we do know that there’s a point where inadequate nutrition == stunted brain development. Surely there is a spectrum? Most of the gradations would be hard to identify and would probably be of little consequence, but there would be some differences.
That said, I went through hell to breastfeed all mine - at least the first six weeks. I pumped exclusively for one of my twins for 21 months. I co-sleep (for my benefit, I hate getting out of bed at night!), we selectively vaccinate, and delay beginning the series also. But my littlest sleeps on her tummy in her crib at naptime (alternative being, she wouldn’t sleep) and oy…I justify it to myself now because she can roll herself over. I figure she won’t suffocate herself that way. I pray I’m right. It’s none of my business what people feed their children as long as they feed their children. I would far rather see an adult holding a baby and loving it while it gets its bottle, than that same bottle propped with a blanket in a stroller while mom shops. But I know how harried people get. I will make a fervent argument for leaving baby boys’ bodies alone whenever medically possible, but the decision once made is made. I would rather see a kid get a judicious swat on the backside than be let to run unguided, undisciplined, and destructive through life. If parents can come up with alternative ways to do the same, more power to them. I don’t manage it.
The thing about kids is, they’re washable, dryable and bounceable. Resilient. And 30 years from now, no matter how carefully you make your parenting choices, they’ll STILL be making conscious choices to raise their kids differently from what you did. So…y’know?
[nitpick] um… when did 11 points become the standard deviation on the WAIS? When did a standard deviation become insignificant? And where did this amazing research come from [/nitpick]
I recently read an article about the autism vs vaccination debate. It turns out that the leader of the investigation, a Dr. Wakefield, was taking money from some lawyers who were researching a case for some parents looking to sue a vaccine company. If you want to read about it, check here:
Best regards
Testy
Okay, my bad if the sd on WAIS isn’t 11 points. That was from recall.
My point wasn’t that it is insignificant, but that most people will not notice the difference at the higher end of the scale - people at that level or above will notice, but you won’t be seeing the difference between not becoming a lawyer or becoming one. My point being that this IS a significant difference, and is more so in visible function the further down the IQ scale you go. 150 or 161, both will be able to tie their shoes (most likely). Both will probably do reasonably well in advanced levels of school (if they have learned the skills to do so, and have motivation), and both will be considered ‘bright’ by their work/life peers. Yadda-yadda-yadda.
I’ll see if I can track down the study - it is the one that is often quoted about the difference in IQ, but when I read the content (granted, ages ago, and memory can fail), it was clear from the study that the difference wasn’t statistically significant until they reached 8 months of breastfeeding, and at that point it went up to 11 pts on WAIS. I can’t remember if it jumped suddenly at that point (going up above statistically insignificant), or if they considered the difference to be statistically significant at that point for some other reason. Oh, and they measured IQ at 7 or 8 years, IIRC.
Anyway, the point being that while breastfeeding has an impact, and that impact is real, other things may have more impact, and beating yourself about it is pointless.
And to add to the list of articles in Shirley’s Parenting Magazine:
Natural childbirth and the insane women who choose it (join us to laugh and poke fun at them).
Pain medications in labor: Will your baby survive?
Read our inspiring stories of women whose houses are always clean, and whose kids are never cranky!
Developmental delay sign of the week!
Yay Hedra! I want you to be my mommy in my next life. 
More Headlines:
**How Hormones Turn you into a sexual virago during your second trimester ** We interview the one woman who is sexual charged by her hormones so she can make the rest of you feel like a dung beetle’s ass for shoving your husband off your leg.
**Will Your Baby Be Normal? ** Take our shocking 25 question poll to find out if your kid will go to Harvard or ride the short bus.
**Abnormal Ultrasound/ funky test results? ** How one woman ignored practical advice & didn’t terminate prayed to her deity and gave birth to a horribly deformed/delayed child and how she was denied the right to sue because she is a fuckwit. " I never saw this coming." My profuse apologies.
**Plan for your little Zygote’s college fund RIGHT NOW! Only $200 a week for the rest of it’s life. Never mind the fact you bring in $235 after taxes per week. ** You don’t want it to have the crappy life you have, do you ? Can’t you live without a few extras and sacrifice food, new bras, heating in your house and muffler for your 17 year old car by giving everything to your child? You selfish, selfish bastard.
**Plan for College. ** Here is a list of the 10 ten Ivy league/Pac 10 schools that your child would never be admitted into anyway. We put this in our magazine as a *neener, neener * to all those pathetic cornfed twits in the midwest. Here is a clue: The entire Midwest is the world’s safety school.
**How to make $30k at home ** Throw a home party and guilt all your friends into coming! Bonus: You get loads of shit you never needed.
Husband doesn’t help out around the house? Take a number.
Husbands: Is your wife depressed, slowly turning into her mother and doesn’t put out like the drunken nympho she was the night you first fucked her silly? Get use to it.
What role do Gene’s Play In our Lives? Look at your spouse. Note the cluelessness that pervades his line. The way they panic in crisis situations. The slack jawed way they beleive everything in an info-mercial. The way they routinely root for sports teams that suck beyond measure and buy franklin mint collectibles. You’ve just continued this line by grunting out your heir. In other words: yer fucked.
Video games spawn violent behavoir and further into the magazine ** Here are our favorite video games must have for Xmas. ** Your kids need an Xbox right now.
And because I cannot stop myself:
Can this marriage be saved? No, do us all a favor and divorce each other. He is a cheating peice of shit who thinks he is gods gift to the Steno pool and you are a clueless, shrew of a trophy wife who is teaching your daughters that it is ok for a woman to put up with this behavior rather than stand on your own to feet and kick the bum out and teaching your son that no matter how much you shit on your wife, she will be there waiting for you. I weep for your 2.3 children.
Gah.
I’ll shut up now.
Oh, Shirley, Please don’t.
You are missing:
10 Cute and Easy and Cheap Halloween Costumes You Can Make They are cute, but only easy if you consider easy having an Art degree and ten hours, and only cheap if you are married to a Cardiologist. Oh, and no child over three would be caught dead in them.
10 Fast Easy and Cheap Dinners See above regarding cheap and easy — and does anyone actually think their kids will eat this.
How to Feed Your Kids so they Will be Healthy and Smart Sure, my kids will eat squash, give up apple juice for unsweetned cranberry juice and LOVE steamed spinich, how about yours.
Get your Post Pregnancy Body back into a Bikini And while we are at it, Tom Cruise in on the phone wanting to know if you are free Friday night.
I knew alot more about how to raise kids before I had some. Of course, I wish I knew as much now as I knew when I was 17, too…I think I see a trend here. Help!
It is truly amazing how quick people are to condemn parents who they feel don’t make enough of a sacrifice, and mock parents who choose not to take the same shortcuts they have chosen.
And its amazing how often people do it who aren’t even remotely in the same circumstances.
The “best” advice comes from people who have never had kids.
The “second best” advice comes from people who had kids a zillion years ago.
The “next best” advice comes from parents of kids who are nothing like you and yours. (i.e. “Well, I never had a problem like that, my only child was an angel - you must be doing something wrong” when discussing your ADHD kid with sensory stimulation disorder who is one of triplets.)
And lastly comes advice from “professionals” You know, most good professionals realize that “one size fits all” advice isn’t great - and its a good thing to know the parents and the child before saying “time outs work,” “put your child to bed by letting him cry it out” or “cosleeping is best for everyone” (My son - timeouts work, gradual weaning from Mommy and Daddy at nighttime worked (moved from cuddle to side of bed to chair in room to sitting in hall to kiss good night and out of there) and LOVED to cosleep (too bad I never got any sleep). My daughter - you’d have to tie her down to get time outs to work, she just gets out of the chair, took forever to break of needing help going to sleep (she is 4 1/2 and still needs a few minutes of cuddle - until she was nearly four she could scream for hours if she didn’t fall asleep while you held her) but HATED cosleeping.)
Dangerosa To put it simply, you just rock.
I understand being frustrated that what experts touts as best seems difficult and may be unmanageable, or simply not work. I understand mocking magazines that try to guilt you and provide useless advice, especially one that also have advertisement for the very things they say to avoid. I do not understand mocking parents who did the difficult things that seem best and it worked for them. Why mock mothers that go through natural childbirth?
Erm? I haven’t seen anyone mocking parents for the choices they have made. In particular, I have seen no one mocking women who chose natural childbirth? I have seen people mocking magazines that both mock and support those choices. While they are joking, the magazines are not. The magazines do run a full range of articles supporting natural, discouraging interevention, and encouraging intervention and yes…mocking natural childbirth. But I don’t think anyone on this thread has been doing any of that.
Yeesh, I was Little Miss Intervention when was was pregnant. I wanted it all: enema, epidural, the whole shebang! It was not to be, however. I only labored for 3.5 hours. I didn’t even get a doctor for my delivery. Just me, my husband and a nurse. I have yet to find a single article written about those of us who are forced to go naturally. 
I think the mocking comes from the pressure tactics used by many of these magazines to create a climate of fear and guilt around every decision that parents make relating to child-rearing and birth. A quick browse of the current online titles here can make it understandable that parents feel they should run screaming from the maternity ward. Mothering Magazine would have us believe that docs routinely killed birthing mothers!
The result of these tactics is that many women, when unable to birth without intervention, come out of the experience disappointed, guilty, and feeling like the interventions were due to some mythical incompetence on the part of themselves and their own bodies.
(Full disclosure, I am a pediatrician)
I think the point is the use of guilt and fear to accomplish ends both noble and ignoble…
Take breastfeeding as the example. No doubt breast is best, but the evidence on IQ is still questionable and trivial if real. The best studies have tried to control for all confounding factors including parental IQ as well as social status, etc and have found no to pretty trivial differences. Breast is best but there is no need to guilt trip those who choose not to. The new campaign is going to try to do that. Instead of that, how about some about how it is a best buy! (Do you know how much formula costs?) The kid likes it. (Hey Mikey!) It is always ready, always warm, easy preperation. And oh yes, it reduces the risk of illness, allergy, etc too.
One of the reasons we don’t promote breastfeeding that way is that people are uncomfortable allowing a child that can show a preference to breastfeed. It has been stated repeatedly by people that frequent this board that if a baby is old enough to communicate a preference it is high time for them to be weaned.
Not sure what one has to do with the other honestly.
And while I’m weighing in, about that autism stuff. You may want to look at another GD thread on autism In it I stated the following:
The others were the ones that blame immunizations.
FWIW
Thanks Shirley, but I can’t possibly rock. I didn’t breastfeed my oldest (he was adopted at six months, but I have been informed that I should have tried to induce lactation). My youngest was only breastfed for six months. I didn’t even consider natural childbirth with her (but nearly got it anyway thanks to a bad labor/delivery nurse - not following a birthplan works both ways - sometimes intervetions happen because they are necessary, sometimes they happen because the doctor/nurse wants to regardless of Mom’s desire - and sometimes they don’t happen regardless of Mom’s desire - I had a “natural is best” labor and delivery nurse) Neither of my kids potty trained until after three and a half - and my daughter was potty trained using a method that someone on a Mommy message board described as “abusive” (we took away pull ups and every “accident” meant she went back into diapers - successful potty behavior got her underwear back on). I own no fingerpaints, have my kids in daycare so I can work full time, and let my children watch television. I even (egads!) drank while pregnant (not knowing I was pregnant until near the second trimester doesn’t help - and I’m not exactly a lush). I’ve never taken my kids to Mommy and Me, didn’t play Mozart when they were babies and never enforced nap time. However, I’m guiltless about all the above - so maybe I do rock.
lee, I PERSONALLY weaned my daughter when she showed a preference for a bottle. Of course, she was a daycare kid, so she was getting expressed milk in a bottle. And she wanted to look at the world instead of my chest. Without her nursing, my milk dried right up regardless of my continued attempts to pump (I was NOT bred for my dairy producing abilities - breastfeeding was amazingly challenging for me - especially when I compare myself to my girlfriends - who can still produce milk months after weaning). I would not have been comfortable with a child who could lift up my shirt (as several of my girlfriend’s children do). However, I do have friends who breastfed until three and later and one aquaintenace who was still nursing her kindergartener - which I find a little strange - but not on the “bad mom” scale, more on the “you painted your livingroom fuchia?!” scale - things I wouldn’t do and I woudn’t be comfortable with, that are so outside my own zone that I may come across as judgemental when I’m just bewildered. Anyway, this is a long way of saying that if I’ve come across as judgemental, I’m really a pretty tolerant person - but sometimes come across as judgemental when I’m just befuddled - and I’m sorry if you’ve read any of my postings wrong (or if I’ve actually ever been intolerant of your choices - like all people, I do have my moments). I’m also pretty intolerant of the constant “breast is best” choir - because, as I’ve said, I’ve been on the other side of that and it is a very hurtful thing to say to someone for whom “breast ISN’T best” (and it isn’t always - its a LOT more complicated than a pithy statement). I’ve occationally noticed that you come across as less than tolerant of other people’s choices as well - i.e. I’ve suspected you think my desire for an epidural in labor is irresponsible and that my working full time is a poor choice - but I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that your confidence in your own choices and my different worldview leaves me just misreading you.
I’m done mocking the existing parenting magazines and books. I’ve come up with my own damn parenting magazine.
Here we go:
**25 Ways to Tell Nosy Strangers to Bite Themselves ** Had it up to here with comments from people who have no idea what they’re talking about? Sick to death of well-meaning strangers offering advice that you’ve heard (and sometimes even tried) a dozen times before? Want to kick the shins of the next person who tells you that you’re doing it all wrong? Print out our handy comebacks on business cards, and just hand them out at will!
**Inspiring True Story of a Woman Whose Entire Motherhood Experience Wasn’t What She PLANNED, and Whose Baby Is Just Fine ** Planned for Natural and it didn’t work out? Wanted meds and had a precipitous birth in the field? Expected to bottle feed and ended up loving breastfeeding? Adopted and couldn’t control everything about the baby’s life up to now? Read on about one mom you can relate to, who had to make all sorts of decisions based on her actual experience, some of them what she wanted, some not, and whose baby is still thriving.
**How to Choose the Birth Approach That is Right For You ** Confused? Evidence-based medicine data on all the interventions and options. BONUS: Sidebar of pros and cons of different childbirth classes, and we actually include the cons!
**Making Breastfeeding Work, and How to Dump The Guilt When It Doesn’t ** How to get the help you want, and how to identify when the laws of diminishing returns have crossed your personal ‘not worth more heroic effort’ line. Includes instructions on writing a ‘pros/cons’ list that you can refer back to whenever you feel the guilt welling up. Get rid of hindsight guilt, and learn the joys of regret, instead.
**Silly Songs You’d Die to Have Your Neighbors Hear, But Your Kids Will Bust Up Over ** We’d be embarassed to include them, but we’ve sung the ‘You have a happy poopy’ song in public. :o
**How To Wipe Snot Off Your Fingers Without Childless Bystanders Noticing Where It Went ** Hint: Your kids socks aaallllways need to be pulled up, don’t they?
**35 Easy Excuses for Your Child’s Tantrums ** - When you know they’re just tired and hungry, but the checkout lady thinks it is because you stay home, or because you don’t.
**Why Society Thinks It Is All The Mom’s Fault ** Stay-at-home? Your kid’s problems are from lack of socialization. Work full time? Your kid’s problems are from lack of mother-care. Why we blame mom for everything.
**Food Your Kid Will Actually Eat ** And it isn’t even grossly bad for them… or not much, anyway. Well, okay, if they eat it ALL the time, that would be bad. For years, we mean. Yeah, years of daily consumption would be bad. Unless they won’t eat anything else, in which case, any good feeding specialist will tell you that calories are the first critical issue anyway.
**How To Tell If Your Pediatrician Is A Good Match For Your Parenting Approach ** When to argue with them, when to try to educate them (they have a LOT of info to keep up on, after all), and when to walk away. BONUS: Sample letter to Doctor explaining your reasons for leaving.
**Rocks and Sticks - Your Child’s Ticket to Outdoor Play Fun! **
Forgot the special feature:
**Yeah, Mom, He’s Eating Dirt: How to Make the Hygeine Hypothesis Work for You **
undefinedOK- take that rock away from Dangerosa and give it to Hedra.
Maybe they can share it!!