When as a baby to expect to be responded to by my parents?

[BooseysMom]

Just reading a rather upsetting book DH got me for Mother's Day called 'The Book you wish your Parents had read' by Philippa Perry, a psychotherapist married to the artist Grayson Perry.

One chapter on pregnancy covers attachment parenting and the different versions of this. I'll try to keep it as brief as i can .. basically it's saying if as a baby you were left to 'cry it out' you are likely going to develop neurosis in later life and have a negative outlook and life experiences and not be able to form relationships easily ... all because as a baby your needs were not met and you were left to cry for hours. This really got to me and left me wondering whether my late DM left me for hours which is why i tend to be anxious and find it hard to be positive. I clearly remember her telling me to ignore DS when he was just 6 weeks old! I was utterly flabbergasted .. how can a tiny baby be left to cry? Of course she was the one i ignored! Last night was bad and during my regular insomnia i just kept going over it in my head. I mean, in the old days the advice was to leave babies to cry ..so surely that means most of our generation are in some way screwed up?!
What do you think? Is this woman right to state this? Should i just step away from the book now?!

As in, she argues it has happened, and that it is a bad thing. Not that she's in favour of it.

I couldn't lock any baby in a room and ignore them! I breastfed but I find the suggestion that this would be easy to do if hormones weren't at work quite offensive

I apologise to you and another pp .. this didn't come across as i intended it! I actually ebf from co-slept from birth and was just wondering whether this was why my SIL found it so easy to lock her kids in their room..the fact she never bf.

Ffs, don't give me any more anxiety please!!

Is our more attentive style of parenting producing happier, more resilient, children, teens and adults? I don't know the answer to this and it would be incredibly difficult to prove conclusively one way or the other, but rising concerns about teen mental health etc make me skeptical. Not saying child neglect is ever OK though obviously.

Ah, that sounds interesting Lisa, I'll look it up, even though it if does rather disprove my point that you can't make a book out of it 😁

I was left to cry occasionally in the 80’s but had the most loving and supportive home. I’m not anxious and have better resilience and confidence than most people I meet.

I think some babies left to cry come from homes where the love and support isn’t there. The problem is not being left to cry. It’s having bad parents.

OP, have you had any counselling? You're extremely critical and judgemental of others, which is quite an unpleasant trait but which can also be a by-product of anxiety (and a mental attempt to convince yourself that you're doing it right, not like those others). You might find yourself a lot happier and more relaxed if you talked to a professional - and, crucially, you're less likely to be modelling damaging behaviour for your children.

I found the book a bit upsetting too op and had to stop reading. there's lots more to it though than just leaving a baby to cry or not (and agree that there is a big difference leaving a baby to grumble for a few mins and ignoring them). it how you treat your baby overall and how you then treat your child as they grow? i see it that the book was saying that ideally parents will be kind, responsive and attentive and will avoid being controling or dismissive. but as I say, I had to stop reading so may have missed key points.

What nonsense - its just a theory, amongst many others.
I know my mum left me to cry it out / did controlled crying. And amongst all of my friends / associates, I have the most positive outlook on life and are the most optimistic. Nor do I have any neurosis.
I do however have challenges with relationships with male partners - but I attribute this more to my difficult relationship with my father, than a short time of my life as a baby while I was learning to sleep.
As with a good many books / theories on parenting, I think you need to take it with a pinch of salt.

OP just also regarding the book. I have great parents and a very happy, content and confident life. I have the book and have to say NONE of it resonated or meant Jack shit to me. It’s completely incorrect in the context of a loving and happy family. But I can see how people with a difficult background latch on to the theories. I’m not sure the book isn’t dangerous for them.

I don't have any studies to refer to but based on my dc and their friends I'd say anxiety seems to be rising alongside the trend for passive/ attachment parenting

That book has a lot of interesting things to say, but with any parenting book it's important not to take things too literally. It takes more than one element of parenting to have a big effect on your child; nature and nurture both have impact. I don't like the idea of any baby being left to cry either, but it's important to know that you can only influence how you treat your own child and let others try their own approaches. What you have identified is that you're upset with how you were cared for as a child. It's good to recognise that and take steps to resolve your leftover frustration and upset about it, we're never too old to work on ourselves.

Not quite getting the not BF = easier to lock the kids in. Do you mean that she wasn’t accustomed to getting up to them in the night?

On your main point, I’ve read that book and I did raise a few eyebrows in the early chapters as it felt like quite a few sticks to beat mothers with. However, the later chapters on parenting kids I found really good, so don’t totally write it off.

For what it’s worth, I was BF and my parents co-slept with me until I went to school. I was hideously anxious until my thirties.

My DH was left to cry it out from six weeks. Not responded to at all for 12 hrs of the night. He isn’t anxious at all...but has very little relationship with his parents as they were and are quite cold and uninterested. It’s hard to tell if it’s the CIO itself, or a symptom of generally detached parenting.

"My own view is that a lot of the women who currently think that you will never have any future problems with a child's mental health ever so long as you aren't one of those dreadful selfish sleep training parents are going to get a big shock in a few years time when they have teens. I think the practices of attachment parenting are fine if they work for the baby and the family at the time (and some of them - like baby wearing or cosleeping - are often the most practical option) but that people have very high expectations that the relatively large sacrifices they require will lead to some future pay off and that's very unclear. My own prediction is that there will be a 'but we coslept, how can you be unhappy now!' thread on MN to replace the 'but we took you to stately homes' in a decade or so's time."

I strongly agree with this. Mental health is very complex and - at least as far as I'm aware - we still haven't completely got to the bottom of why some people are more susceptible to mental illness than others. Yet I've met quite a few mothers who seem to think that it's like baking a cake and, if you add all the attachment parenting ingredients in the right order, you can guarantee that your child has no mental health issues and your adult relationship with them is brilliant. Human beings just aren't like that.

My mother wasn't an attachment parent in the modern sense but she fell into the same trap when it came to being a long-term SAHM. Not that there was anything wrong with her choices but she was convinced that she'd aced the whole parenting thing by staying at home until we kids went to uni. When I was a teenager, she was already bragging about how happy, confident and successful her kids were, not like those unhappy, unsettled kids whose mothers rejected them by going back to work.... And then I had a breakdown in my twenties, and my brother messed up his degree, got married and went fairly low contact with the lot of us.

I was a baby/child often left to my own devices unless I needed feeding or changing. My Grandparents had me, my brother and younger sister to look after and I was the middle of the three. My Gran has told me that unless I was absolutely screaming myself sick she would leave me in a cot in the bedroom, from baby to toddler age (when I figured out how to climb out of the cot and let myself out of my bedroom) don’t really remember having kisses or cuddles from either of them when I was a bit older, little sister did as she was the youngest, brother did because they never had a son of their own so he was their only chance to raise a boy. As a result I find that I’m not overly comfortable with physical affection (such as hugs and what have you) from people I don’t know well and often have to tell DH that I’m not in the mood to be held. He understands thankfully but other than that, I’m fairly well adjusted, resilient and I am the sort of person that it takes a lot to make panic. I did have issues with panic disorder prior to having my own DC, but that was a result of a bad event later in life.

DH was left to “cry it out” in the traditional sleep training sense, but was cuddled, kissed and given a lot of affection, he had issues with anxiety too as an adult.

I think that there is probably some correlation between what a newborn experiences and how they develop coping strategies early in life, but I also think that people are constantly changing due to all their experiences so issues with anxiety, depression etc. can’t all be traced back to one specific event or occurrence easily.

@RainbowsandSnowdrops.. thanks for your post. I feel exactly like you and being a total attachment parent i encounter ALOT of criticism from DH's family and am on the verge of an all-out Eastenders style fight with them.
So excuse me LisaSimpsonsbff for coming across as a critical fuck-up who needs counselling in case in turn i fuck my kids up..(nice comment thanks!) but i face this criticism from people who seem to have very little bond with their kids to the extent that they virually accuse me of sexual abuse of my DS because i co-sleep!!

My experience both as a child and a parent mirrors Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g

I also had my DC in the nineties and have parents in their 80s so I guess we were both born in the 60s. My parents have pictures of my DB well wrapped up in his pram with rosey cheeks out in the garden in the snow.

I was and am much loved too and haven’t had any such MH issues. I think different generations patented different ways. Whose to say that the current generation over babies won’t have other problems in adulthood.

Being left to cry, really depends on how old your mother is/was.
My mother followed the advice that babies should only be fed every 4 hours, and be left to cry.
We talked about this before I had any of my children, as I was astonished.
She said that this was the advice at the time. I asked how she could leave a baby to cry, and she said that she would get the baby’s bottle ready (she formula fed).
So my impression is that she did not always follow it.
However, this advice was commonplace at the time, and mothers then pass this onto their children (as your DM was obviously attempting to do).

Baguetteaboutit is absolutely correct. The child as a blank slate view puts all the responsibilty on parents and suggests there is a way of doing things perfectly, creating a bigger market for these books. The thing is it isn't correct. Of course parenting has a big effect but it interacts with individual genetics. Later on factors outside the family like peer relationships and schooling come into play. It is too simplistic to look backwars and assume your mother must have been inattentive. Also the era of 4 hourly feeds and baby in the pram in the garden was 1940s and 50s, not 70s and 80s, although different parents took different approaches, as they do today.

My mum used to put me on the washing machine when it was on to drown out the noise so she could get a quiet cup of tea. I was a screamy baby (as was my baby) due to what would now be diagnosed as reflux. In the good old days my mum was told to just let me get on with it.... so she did.

I am a well adjusted adult.

My parents did the baby in the garden and four hourly feeds in the 60s (me and DB1) and early 70s DB2.

So excuse me LisaSimpsonsbff for coming across as a critical fuck-up who needs counselling in case in turn i fuck my kids up..(nice comment thanks!) but i face this criticism from people who seem to have very little bond with their kids to the extent that they virually accuse me of sexual abuse of my DS because i co-sleep!! shock

But this is what I mean - why do you have to attack others? Of course it's wrong for them to criticise your choices, but why declare them bad parents in return (and saying that they don't love their children and speculating that it's because she didn't breastfeed is really, really nasty) rather than simply being happy and confident in your own choices?

I was very, very critical of others when my anxiety was at its worst. As I said, it's a coping mechanism. I'm much less so now, and it's made me more pleasant to be around but also, crucially, it's made me much happier.

i think there have been studies.but it also depends on too many factors.bcasue its like saying the studis on depression and other mental disorders.thre are just too many things that come along with it to truly say cause and effects.its too many shades with emotioanl health.
because these mothers seeing as they left the baby in the first part you might think would be the type of mother to do other things differently too.be stricter.more detatched etc. or would they then go on to nurture and give them all the cozy love?would the bond then be effected so they would be different mother and child?would they be mothers finding it harder to cope.
so your mum might have done this as a child.did she then give you all the love in the world you needed.because this could change things.or was she more strict continuing.it all effects things and how you continue to grow.

Just catching up again with the thread as my previous post never got thru..

Heartfelt thanks to @Scrimshawthesecond,
@EllesBells123, @OrangeSlices998 for the kind words

Sorry to those who have suffered trauma in childhood and these feelings are being re-surfaced.

@AmIRightOrAMeringue.. that's a good point..where are the scientific studies to back up her claims? i haven't come across any references as yet

The whole 'child as a blank slate' thing is interesting because I think a big part of its appeal is actually because people want it to be true.

If the child is a blank slate, there is an element of control. If you do all the right things your child will be happy. If the child isn't a blank slate their happiness isn't entirely within your control.

Similarly, if the child is a blank slate it gives you answers about your own personality. Why am I anxious? It's all my parents' fault. Why am I not resilient? Why do I have a short temper? Oh, it's not my fault, it's the way I was raised (and therefore don't have to assume personal responsibility).

So actually it's a very appealing idea to many ...

As pp have pointed out this idea has been debated for centuries.

Obviously I don't think everyone abdicates personal responsibility if they ascribe to this view!

As with most things I think the truth is somewhere between the two extremes ...

OP, sorry to hear you've been so anxious and hope you feel better soon.