To wonder if Sarah Ockwell Smith actually has any useful advice in her books?

[Spicycurry]

I am sure she is a lovely lady and very good parent.

But I read her sleep book and it pretty much just told me to put up with it until my child slept better.

Ordered her toddler book and it seems to be much of the same.

it is helpful of course to understand where my child is coming from if you like but I am not sure it’s particularly useful to read when at the end of your tether!

or will I be flamed by her fans?

The sleep book was indeed effing useless and just gave me the rage! I’m not sure how I was supposed to take time for myself while just accepting I was never going to get more than two hours’ sleep in one go. Although I think it is helpful to know bad sleepers are developmentally normal and not a reflection of your parenting, as some people might imply…

I actually agree with her overall approach and I find some of her blog posts helpful but the books I read... not really.

I do think there's a place for authors/pages that basically say ditch the sleep guilt and let them sleep in your bed if it works for you, but it's also not v helpful for that to be the only input. Some suggestions for what to do when it's not working would also be helpful. Unfortunately it seems to be you either get reassurance about feeding to sleep/bedsharing but mass guilt trips about any form of intervention or you get useful workable plans for intervention with mass guilt trips about "bad habits" Just fuck off and somebody write one in the middle? Maybe I should but I'm no good at the sleep training part

Gentle parenting I've had my puzzles with for 14 years now but I've eventually realised that it's all wildly inconsistent because the only thing gentle parents agree on is that gentle parenting = not authoritarian parenting, and therefore lots of it will wax lyrical about why authoritarian parenting (obedience, discipline, control) is bad but not actually provide much insight about what to do instead. And if they do tell you what to do instead it can vary so enormously you can get really confused if you mistakenly think it's one cohesive thing. Also, a lot wang on about how they are soooo special and different to the mainstream but... "mainstream" is also anti authoritarian parenting now as well and has been for ages - it's recognised that authoritative parenting is the ideal type.

I still have the same general principles that first attracted me to gentle parenting but I'm done with wishy washy unhelpful and elitist guides to it... I just look for guides to parenting approaches that seem to align whether or not they call themselves "gentle" - it's become a bit of a buzzword now anyway, and a lot of the "gentle parenting" accounts on social media are totally bog standard old rules and punishment except you call it "natural consequences" and that makes it nice

Interestingly, her latest book explores the issue of what to do when you're burned out/know what you want to do but can't keep it up and I think it's actually trying to follow books like hers that made me feel like that It's a really interesting topic but unfortunately from reading the sample, I think it has the same issue and doesn't really address the issue that it wants to, which is a shame, because I think she has really good intentions/principles in general but just lacks something in communicating them. And actually the biggest thing that helped me feel less burned out and "can't keep up" was being less perfectionist about "methods" and understanding that it doesn't actually matter that much what exact wording you use and just generally being a bit nicer to myself and ditching the guilt, also, learning how and when to have boundaries.

She's not the only one either. I was listening to an interview recently with Tina Payne Bryson and she was laughing at people who get really intently into methods and think you have to do everything perfectly, but I follow her on FB and every week for the last forever it feels like, she's been posting "mistake Mondays" which show you all the parenting mistakes you're making, and it makes me feel stabby. Less guilt inducing please.

If only it were that simple....

Breastfeeding is the best if baby is not gaining weight and getting dehydrated in early days? Breastfeeding is best if baby cannot latch properly and is not getting adequate milk? (Because lets be honest, breastfeeding support is dismal in UK) Breastfeeding is best if older baby/toddler is waking hourly at night needing it for comfort and mother is unable to focus at work/ mental health is suffering as a result?

Just a few examples from many where it may not be best.

I breastfed both of mine but a lot of it working was down to luck - luck that I have my mother who breastfed to guide me, that I was able to access and afford any further support where needed and that my babies latched easily.

I've just looked up calmandbright sleep and they are doing the nonsensical renaming thing as well!

If you think sleep training is fine, then... fine? But why rename it "sleep teaching" (it's more training than teaching...) just be upfront FGS. Don't pretend you've invented a new thing that has none of the downsides people associate with the other thing.

Sleep teaching - that gave me a giggle, I'm picturing myself standing in front of a whiteboard with a powerpoint and some markers trying to explain to my two year old that we're all happier when she just sleeps through.

I was 'fortunate' enough to have two children who slept through from very early on and everyone wanted to know my 'secret' when there isn't one. I put them in the cot and they slept. That was it.

Neither napped much in the day and the eldest pretty much cried for 12 hours a day straight for the first 3 months so I wasn't surprised he was exhausted to be honest. I know I was. They are 9 and 7 now and don't go to sleep until about 10pm now.

This is it though. For all the ways you can have a 'perfect' child that does XY and Z, there will be some other disaster waiting for you.

You're absolutely right. It's much better to starve them.

There is a group on Facebook and the sheer amount of miserable mothers is astounding. The book basically says to completely sacrifice yourself for the baby. No at all healthy

It's interesting to see this thread as there is a group of us who were on a forum with SOS while she was birthing and raising babies and toddlers.
We quite often met up IRL too and can assure you all that SOS did not practice what she preaches in her books at all.
She often asked for and got advice about most of the topics she has written books about, so there are a lot of people out there paying for advice they could probably find online.
And she is not a better mother than anyone else. She's certainly no parenting expert!
We have been baffled by why her writings are so popular for some time. It's nice to know we aren't alone.

Can we not ? This isn't a thread about breastfeeding.

If someone had told me it would work I would have been right up there. 😁

The memories are fading, but they are still there in the darkest part of my mind. I did "gentle night weaning" (some guy, can't remember who) but it was absolutely brutal and not particularly gentle.

It was actually hitting / biting I was wanting advice about, although things have improved lately there is room for improvement so to speak!

Ds1 was an absolutely terrible sleeper as a baby. I bought the book as I wasn't prepared to do cry it out and wanted different tips. Trouble is, if you aren't going to train then it's not going to change any faster. He eventually got there and from about 2.5 slept through deeply. No amount of noise wakes him up now! But I do regret the money I spent on the book for it to tell me bugger all. I could have waited it out without the book expense.

I taught in early years in a very naice school. You could spot the children whose parents bought into the ‘gentle parenting’ thing. After that year I decided I would not be doing it with my children.

I went through the same thing with hitting/biting. You can't solve that one with logical/natural/related consequences so you have two (three) choices:

You can do the calm, non-scary, non-related punishment thing e.g. time out/sitting on step/loss of screen time (if over about 3-4 otherwise it has to be instant) combined (or not) with insistence on apology.

Or if you want non-punitive then you just need to hover and intercept, Janet Lansbury style "I won't let you hit/bite". Which means never leaving siblings alone together - you can do the RIE thing and create separate "yes spaces" - I never had any patience for this though.

Either way, it's a phase which will pass when they gain better conflict resolution skills, so working on conflict resolution and alternatives to hitting helps too. I keep reminding DS2 (4) to ask for help if he feels like he wants to hit his brother, which does actually work about 80-90% of the time as long as we treat it as an emergency and jump in to help (referee/problem solve/just remove the baby) before it gets to the point of hitting - if he's at the point of asking for help, then he can't really wait, and that's OK. Next stage will probably be trying to get them to do some problem solving between themselves before seeking help, but DS3 is only 1 so can't talk or problem solve or follow 4yo instructions yet.

Lots of emphasis on alternatives too - you can't hit/bite people but you can hit/bite the sofa/the stairs/that cushion/this teething toy.

So pleased to have found this thread and some likeminded parents! In the circles I move in, almost everybody is a "gentle parent", and I find a lot of them quite unpleasant and intolerant - one of them described me as "selfish" for admitting that I preferred formula-feeding to breastfeeding! In general the attitude of the gentle parents in my life is that "gentle parents" know best - lots of posts on Facebook about how their husband doesn't parent exactly like they do, and how can they make him see the error of his ways? The idea that Dad's opinion might be of equal weight to Mum's is never entertained.

"Attachment parenting" is the other term I hate. It's a complete distortion of attachment theory. Most "gentle parenting" and "attachment parenting" stuff is scientifically illiterate and is based on misquoting or exaggerating studies, or looking at inappropriate surrogate outcome markers (like how people talk about serum cortisol levels re: sleep training, when more relevant outcome measures would include attachment and wellbeing later in life).

When I was pregnant I had intended to breastfeed and babywear and all that stuff, but my child had other ideas - he preferred cot naps to contact naps almost from birth, and even while I was exclusively breastfeeding neither of us liked co-sleeping! And he didn't enjoy being in a baby carrier, either.

I looked at Sarah Ockwell-Smith's website once when I had a young baby. It made me feel horrendous and I cried for the rest of the day.

I really struggle to meet like-minded mums because the gentle parenting thing is so prevalent now, and any time I say anything that deviates from that narrative I get shouted down.

Oh god yes, 'attachment parenting' is another one - that school of childrearing philosophy and actual attachment theory have literally nothing to do with each other. It just got that name because the author of that particular parenting book thought it would be a good fit. And then you come on Mumsnet and read thread after thread of people justifying whatever because it results in a nice, strong attachment. And the idea that mega-close, wear them at all times, attachment parenting leads to children suddenly become more independent than they would have been if they were pushed around in a pram instead is completely laughable (and certainly not borne out by the children I know who were the product of hardcore attachment parenting, most of whom remain incredibly clingy well past the baby/toddler years, though obviously this is a small sample - I'm sure some aren't clingy at all, but it's got nothing to do with the babywearing!)

There are other better gentle parenting books.

The baby guru, who shall not be named, on the other end of the scale is the other side of the same coin.

Read the book, couldn't find the time to pee.

Like others, I'm also infuriated by her books being touted as being 'evidence based' when they're anything but.

I knew her slightly years ago when she was a homeopath/hypnobirth/doula and I can confirm that she is all about creating an image of scientific rigour but has absolutely no understanding of how to analyse research. She's basically a quack who has built a business out of Googling stuff and writing it down.

She's always been recommended to me by the most guilt triply people ever so never been tempted remotely to read

Thanks to this thread I've spent the last 20 minutes reading 1- and 2-star reviews of Sarah Ockwell-Smith books on Amazon. Laughed out loud at some of them!

It's interesting though. One of the reviews talks about how many advocates of this kind of parenting wear exhaustion as a badge of honour, and I agree - in my social circles maternal exhaustion is utterly normalised and it seems to be accepted that children will wake several times overnight well into their primary school years. If mums are happy with this, that's fine - but actually the mums I know who live this way don't seem happy at all.

It also seems to be normalised that co-sleeping means that the parents can't share a bed for years, and that therefore they don't have much (if any) sex. I just wouldn't want to live like that.

One of the reviews talks about how many advocates of this kind of parenting wear exhaustion as a badge of honour, and I agree - in my social circles maternal exhaustion is utterly normalised and it seems to be accepted that children will wake several times overnight well into their primary school years.

This was my experience of the sleep board on here just under 6 years ago. The number of women who shot me down for needing some rest all because they lived on 1-2hours/night all through the baby and toddler years. No matter how exhausted they were, they did it all because they loved their child(ren) so so much and were much better parents than I could ever be. I was made to feel like an awful mother for wanting some rest. Once in a better place and rested, I did go on from time to time to defend the decision to do what is best for each individual but I was wasting my time and breath.

I do sometimes wonder how their children are now (but not enough to revisit the board!)

’Gentle parenting and some of its consequences such as co-sleeping are regressive and reinforce traditional norms’

‘You can only have sex at night in your bedroom’