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?

While in theory you can have sex whenever and wherever you want, most people with jobs and children tend to have sex in their bedroom for privacy's sake, and early morning and bedtime are the two most convenient times if you're working during the day.

Of all the co-sleeping parents I know, the vast majority report rarely if ever having sex, and only one has told me she's happy with her sex life. I realise not everybody feels comfortable discussing their sex life even with friends, but it's striking how many of them are vocal about their lack of a sex life.

My SIL was so into cosleeping and feeding every time her child turned over at night that she couldn't get pregnant again for nearly five years...because sex wasn't happening and frequent feeding meant her period didn't come back. I still can't imagine feeding a talking school aged child so much that you are unable to get pregnant. That is no life really. And she did it all spouting some nonsense about how well bonded they were and how my actually independent DS was irreparably damaged by non evidence based parenting. 🙄

Gosh I can’t imagine knowing that much detail. I don’t talk about my children’s sleep or my sex life with anyone.

She has some good ideas about managing nap dropping I thought.

Exactly @BertieBotts there needs to be a 'just doing some stuff and bits of childrearing are still inevitably going to be annoying'..

I had 2 non sleepers. I also went back to work when they were still quite young and thought i was actually going mad. The 6yo is still pretty bad. I did try and sleep train them (didn't work) so there is a place for someone saying it's ok just to do whatever you need to do to get through, blah blah, when I was feeling like I shouldn't let them sleep in my bed but also had to be up for work in 2 hours.

But the whole idea of methods is just so tedious, is in general a bunch of sexist crap around another load of feminized labour, and is almost never aimed at working mothers (because one must spend all their time submitting to the method). I think it preys on the inevitable loss of identity that comes with early motherhood. You can't just use a sling because it's convenient when you take the bus a lot, you have to 'do babywearing'.

The same goes for the opposite direction as well, Gina Ford style.

The whole thing seems bloody ridiculous by the time they're 7 or 8 anyway.

And that's great, but quite a lot of women in my social circle do, and in particular are vocal about never having sex because their kids share their bed instead of their husband.

Just because you wouldn't share that level of detail with acquaintances doesn't mean I'm making it up 🤷‍♀️

She is known as Sarah Ockwell Bollocks in our house

Amen to this thread. I bought one of her books when DS was younger, thought the book was the biggest crock of shite ever!

I wouldn't even give her book away on Olio, as I didn't want to inflict the guilt on another tired, vulnerable parent.

@JardinsduBasil Really hit the nail on the head there. It pisses me off so much that so many parenting guides seem to be stuck in some 1950s Stepford model where it's just assumed that the mother stays home. DH and I both work full time demanding jobs - I need a parenting book for that. A non-guilty one.

I find the Facebook group in particular is full of women posting, despairing that their four year old won't sleep or needs to lie with a parent for an hour to sleep etc, and everyone responds 'this is totally normal'
Yes maybe normal if you want to also be exhausted or you don't want an evening to yourself. But it is unhelpful to parents to just say 'little children act like this and you can't affect any change so put up with it'

I didn’t suggest you were :)

Try 1, 2, 3 Magic @Spicycurry if you're looking for behaviour techniques.

I found Sarah OS useless. Two non-sleepers, but her book had no advice or reassurance. It's not reasonable to suggest to a working mother that maybe a distressed child shouldn't have to go to nursery that day.

But I also didn't find the Baby Whisperer or any of the sleep training books useful either. My girls did not respond. At all.

Things may have been easier for them if they'd been spared reflux. Or if their big sister (my DSD) had lived with us every day rather than going to her mother's house on a rota: maybe there would have been less separation anxiety at night. Or if I had a calmer demeanour rather than an anxious one. Or if I found routines easy to establish without Elvanse and CBT. But we didn't have those things working in our favour at the time.

I think the only thing I gained out of all the books I read is that a bedtime routine helps massively with getting your kid down in the first place. That is the one consistent message from all of them. And a consistent routine eventually led to fewer wakeups, and eventually wakeups that were easier to settle, and then eventually no wakeups.

None of the books really talk about how dads can or should be consistently involved with nighttime support.

I once read a comment on MN along the lines of... the person who benefits the most from Sarah Ockwell Smith giving out advice is Sarah Ockwell Smith. This has proven to be true.

I breastfed my babies until they were toddlers.... But there is very little scientific evidence that breastfeeding a full term baby in a developed country with a clean water supply is actually better than formula feeding. There are definitely benefits in terms of cost savings and environmental impact and on the mother's risk of breast cancer. But for the baby the benefits are more theoretical than backed up with evidence.

If you believe this you've swallowed the formula propaganda which is rife on SM at the moment.

There are definite benefits to baby. No, they aren't so miraculous that they wipe out all contextual factors - a mother struggling with depression who would be helped by formula feeding, it's probably going to be a net benefit to her baby to formula feed, for example. (and not all depression cases would be helped by FF, just one example) But it is absolutely not true that the only benefits are for premature babies or in places where water is unsafe.

There's no point beating people up if BF doesn't work for them for whatever reason, people should largely pick what works for their family. But to say there are no benefits is false.

Oooh - I was on that forum too and I was to say the same thing!

I threw her book across the room. I didn’t want to sleep train and never did. Had awful sleepers but her book was full of shite. So so so unhelpful. It made me feel so inadequate

Yeah I hate this.

It's really not normal for a child to wake multiple times overnight. Children need to sleep for their development.

I half love her books because they made me feel normal and good for not being able to (or wanting to) sleep train.

But I also agree that if you just wanted help then it wasn’t helpful. And I do have more guilt thinking about these things and if my son ever cries.

But she’s also right about a lot of it. If you actually look at up to date psychology.

I disagree. It’s actually totally normal and the reason that humans in the majority of the world sleep with their children. Literally the same as every other mammal.

Our society has changed this as we have other needs and that’s also ok.

I disagree. It’s actually totally normal and the reason that humans in the majority of the world sleep with their children. Literally the same as every other mammal.

Our society has changed this as we have other needs and that’s also ok.

Humans aren't the same as 'every other mammal' though.

Regardless, it's not normal for humans to have unsettled night every night past the age of about 6 months, maybe a year.

It's normal to sleep through the night!

Actually adult sleep isn't sleeping through either. We wake up quite a few times in the night, we just aren't aware of it. In fact a few hundred years ago split nights were common: people would go to sleep for 3-4 hours, get up and eat, etc. and then go back to bed. Sleep has kind of changed with society.

I know we wake briefly and then resettle. Toddlers and children should also be doing this. Not having many unsettled nights. It doesn't benefit anyone to properly wake up every 90 minutes/2 hours.

Split nights is fine if that's what you want to do. I'm talking about unsettled nights that are benefitting no one.