'The only way we've sorted a sleep prob in this house is controlled crying' - fuck off!!

[Smataya]

I text friend who has two under two how hard it's been of late with Ds 11 months just not sleeping. I've explained before he is just not a sleeper and likes to be close at night, wakes a lot for milk and that I'm doing attachment parenting. She knows how against cc I am and I will not ever leave my child to cry. Ds has not slept for longer than an hour since he was 5 months which is starting to take its toll, but as I say, he's just not a sleeper and it's tough.

Why the f is she doing this pa bull shit about cc over text?? She's been like eerr have you tried sleep training to me before and I just don't want to hear it. Her two sleep through and I just find it smug- she's got lucky and now claiming its all down to cc. Am I justified in texting back to say ftfo to the far side of fuck?!?!

Wow! This thread though!

I'm another one who wants to hear what APers do when the toddler's needs don't fit round the newborn. That is, when the going gets tough. If you've got a toddler and a newborn who are pretty low needs and able to manage around each other, that's the easy part. Frankly near enough any parenting technique will work in those circumstances. So let's hear what AP advises when things aren't so easy and convenient.

Is it so hard to understand that you can meet the needs of more than one child at t he same time?

A teacher manages to care for 30 kids at a time- looking after two is not so hard.

Looking after two is a piece of piss when they're both dead easy, as mine are. I want to know how AP works when they're not, when you have more than one child and their demands are competing, not fitting in around each other. I'm interested. Clearly I don't understand how you would AP in that situation, so perhaps you'd be so good as to help me fourtothedozen. Without any teacher analogies though. They're not parenting.

MuffMuff - I'd also like to know what APers do if their baby hates the sling, won't feed or cuddle to sleep, and if co sleeping doesn't work ie the baby actually sleeps less when co sleeping (all these were at various times the case for my dd).

IMO AP is like any other parenting approach - great if it happens to suit your baby, useless if it doesn't.

But AP can involve a sling, it can involve co-sleeping, but if you are using these things against a baby's wishes, it's not AP.

AP is about respecting a baby's needs, not forcing him into set devices or ways of behaviour.
An AP parented baby may very well sleep apart from his mother, if that is his preference than it can still be AP.

Again, why is not doing cc assumed to mean having a child glued to you 24/7. Or not doing cc meaning you ap? Or your child doesn't sleep? There's a million things inbetween.
I didn't ap from what I can gather, no sling, no co-sleeping unless you count early days in a Moses basket and the odd time I dosed off feeding. Didn't hold her till she fell asleep as a rule etc.
Nobody is saying everyone using cc is allowing their child to nightly scream for hours on end so it sobs itself to sleep from exhaustion, so why the assumption anybody not using cc is extreme the other way?

"AP is about respecting a baby's needs"

And what are those needs, in your esteemed opinion, when the baby screams non-stop every second that she is awake whether she is being left alone, held, rocked, kissed, or whatever?

Clearly you have had easy children whose needs were easily met, which is why you are quipping about how one parent can instantly meet all of her children's needs. Some of us were not so lucky.

Clearly you have had easy children whose needs were easily met

You are wrong.

Going back to the original post-there was nothing passive aggressive about your friend's response-she just told you what worked for her. If that's not the way you want to do things fine-but no need for the "fuck off". Can only assume that you are extremely tired.

Oh my goodness, are you really so narrow minded?? What an aggressive post. I am an advocate of CC, it worked for us, twice!!

So fourtothedozen, yours haven't been easy children with needs that were simple to meet. Ok. Was there never a single time when these high needs children's requirements didn't fit round each other? If the answer to that is, as I suspect, that they didn't always, how did you AP in those circumstances? I would like to understand. Perhaps I might even pick up something useful.

I find that quite a hard question to answer, because I don't really know how "non AP " parents do things.

I was doing "AP" before I had even heard of the term. It's the way my family parent. I was raised in an AP style, even my father who was born in the 1920s was raised that way by his parents.
In 1925 he was breastfed until 3, co-slept, was carried in a sling was never punished.
I was raised the same way so it was just second nature to do the same thing when I became a parent. I had been "APing" for a year before I even knew there was a name for it.

Let me try and help you then. You have two or more young children, all of whom have competing needs at this point. Perhaps the 3 year old wants to sit on your knee all alone because she's feeling a bit fed up and wants the undivided attention of her mummy. She will not be distracted. Either she gets to sit on your knee on her own, or she'll be upset. And the baby is grizzling because he wants a feed. You're the only adult about. There are two children who have competing needs. You cannot meet both of these needs at once, one of them has to wait. Who? Or to make it even more fun, let's add in a six year old who's just fallen over something outside and is screeching for you now.

Now, I can think of non-AP ways to deal with this situation, ie where some of the children have to wait despite being very upset about this. And I can think of ways in which you might be able to deal with some of the needs simultaneously, but not all. For example, you could bf the baby in the sling whilst going and seeing to the six year old, and it might be possible you could extricate them from whatever mess they've got themself into whilst still safely bf baby in the sling. Maybe. That would still leave the three year old, though. Or you might be able to pick up your three year old, assuming you can lift them ok, whilst investigating the six year old, but the baby has to wait. What I can't do is work out how to respond to each child's needs without at least one of them having to wait to have their needs met (and this is even presuming that the parent is sufficiently able bodied to use a sling, carry an older toddler, no medical contraindications to breastfeeding etc, and of course that all the children of the family are singletons too). So how would a parent AP in this situation?

minipie I think we must have had the same baby! Any attempt at AP with my dd caused her more distress, hated co-sleeping, hated the sling and would fight me if I attempted to cuddle or feed her to sleep!! My point is the op (if she is still around to read any of this!) may have a baby who is similar but refuses to believe that any other way that AP could be better for all of them.

The needs of a three year old or indeed a 6 year old are different to the needs of a baby.
They can have empathy for others, they can wait, they can have situations explained to them.

Feeding a baby in a sling allows two free hands , a voice and a face to amuse a 3 year old.
A three year old would show empathy towards a 6 year old sibling who was distressed and in need of help, he would be able to understand that his needs could wait a little.
AP in not about immediately doing as commanded by older children.

Nice attempt at ducking there fourtothedozen, but you've ignored the salient points. I've told you that all the 3 year old wants is to sit, alone, on her mummy's knee. She will not be distracted. You either sit her on your knee alone or she's going to be upset. Those are the choices. If you've never had a 3 year old who's felt like this, then your claim that your children were not easy, with needs that were simple to meet, is starting to look a bit dubious. You don't know whether the 6 year old is in immediate danger, the only way you're going to learn that is by failing to meet the needs of at least one of the other children: because even if the 3 year old could be distracted without upset, which I've told you she can't, that would take time that you might not necessarily have given that you can't be sure the 6 year old is safe.

So, I'd like you to tell me how you AP in a situation where your children have immediate, competing needs. Needs that need attending to now, if the child is not to be upset. Not try to reframe the question. As I said, I'd like to understand.

You either sit her on your knee alone or she's going to be upset.

But it's up to me as a parent to open up the options.

That's still not answering the question. Are you suggesting that a parent would always be able to 'open up the options'? I think a number of readers will be having a good giggle if so. And even if you could, what do you do if the other child/ren have needs at the same time that you can't attend to at the same time as 'opening up the options'?

When it comes down to it, for most parents of more than one child there are going to be times when they have immediate, competing needs which cannot all be attended to simultaneously. Particularly if they have children close together, which is common these days. Denying that this could ever happen is flying in the face of reality for most of us. Your children are very unusual if they will never be upset by having to wait. I do not understand how you can continue to meet the principles of AP in this situation.

I don't need you to understand- it works for me.

That's true. You don't need me to understand. However, if you're unwilling to answer quite a simple question, perhaps don't berate others for not understanding.

As it happens though, I did find our exchange quite illuminating- you did exactly what I thought you'd do. You tried to move the goalposts, denied the possibility that such a situation might happen and then, when pressed for a straight answer, you flounced. My hypothesis is that this is because, actually, if you have more than one child, you can only do AP proper if they're both/all very, very easy (or you have very big age gaps maybe, but most people don't these days). This is because when you only have one pair of hands, something sometimes has to give. And if your children have never had immediate competing needs that you can't address simultaneously without someone getting upset, they're obviously not that difficult. Indeed, they're so easy that your experience simply can't be extrapolated to the vast majority of parents. If anyone wants to prove me wrong, let's hear how you'd deal with the scenario I outlined.

I think ap can work out and be beneficial to baby and mother but not always. For most parents (at least all the ones I know) the don't fully subscribe to any one school of parenting they just do what they have to do to get through the day and night!!

I take exception though to the insinuation thought that because I didn't co-sleep, I did allow some cc and I didn't carry dd around in a sling that I care any less about my child. I constantly respond to my dds needs, however if she is never allowed to feel any degree of frustration or upset that how will she ever learn to deal with difficult emotions?

Four WTF???? I didn't know my baby was crying - had I known he was in the living room screaming the place down I would have picked him up. I would have soothed any child next to me going purple from screaming. I found it very odd that someone who had just spent half a hour telling me how damaging crying (any crying) was, was prepared to stand & stare at mine & not even let me know.

Fwiw - I had very demanding other children when ds3 was a baby. Ds2 was two, but 5 year old ds1 was/is severely autistic & required constant supervision. I actually found some AP approaches worked well. Particularly slinging him. Ds1 used to take 20 minutes to get inside the house after the school bus dropped him off. I'd feed ds3, pop him on my back ten mins before ds1's bus was due & he's fall asleep while I wrestled with ds1 in the street.

My 3 have all required different approaches to sleep. Maybe that's the definition of being child led.

I think saying you abandon AP with the second is a misunderstanding of what AP is. We did far more AP things with the second as hadn't heard of it when DS was a baby. It resulted in DD being more contented and crying far less, so DS could get more attention not less. It resulted in me having good nights' sleep so I had the energy to do things with DS in the day. For us, it was win-win.

Of course there were still times when they were both unhappy. Preventing even one child from ever crying is just not possible, as demonstrated by nicestrongtea's tantrumming toddler friend up thread. AP doesn't as far as I know say you must instantly do everything your toddler tells you. (Or if it does I was doing it wrong!) It's not some new wonder-drug, it's just another way of trying to keep everyone happy as much of the time as you can, involving more slings and cosleeping and less pushchairs and leaving babies around crying. I don't think Muff's question is any particular dilemma for an AP-er, just a normal everyday situation where you try to find a compromise like everyone else does.

Now in OP's case, something is clearly not right with sleep. We've had times when things weren't right with sleep, my Gina Ford-ing friend also had times when things weren't right with sleep. Neither of us instantly rejected our whole parenting method, we just fixed the sleep issues and got on with it. What's wrong here isn't AP or the lack of CC, it's the lack of sleep, that can be fixed.