To ask if those early parenting decisions make a difference to later child mental health

[deliverdaniel]

My kids are teens now but when they were tiny all of the early parenting decisions/ choices seemed so high stakes. Attachment style parenting vs routines. Breastfeeding vs ff. Cosleeping vs Gina Ford style routines. Sleep training etc etc.

For those with older DC what "style" of parenting did you do (attachment style/ routines/ more of a mix etc) and what is your child's mental health / security/ confidence etc like now? I"m not looking for research studies or opinions about these styles in theory- just your personal experience.

YABU- I think my parenting style produced the promised outcome in my DC

YANBU- I don't think any of it made any difference

I have 3 dc.

They are all so different in personality .

They came as the people they are so interact and respond to my parenting very differently.

Mine all seem to be fine, happy, functioning and healthy and developing in line with peers and society's expectations.

They are seriously privileged, not only materially but in that we have been lucky enough to provide them with stability, no real trauma or drama and they have many interested adults in their lives.

I suspect that things like infant feeding or sleep are absolutely minimal influences or eventual outcomes compared to say bereavement or DV.

I think one of the best things I have been able to do is be available to them. I wasn't necessarily good at tantrum management or sleep routines, but I have always always been right there when they needed me.

All that said, my parents gave not a second's thought to their parenting style and were very busy and distracted most of the time...and myself and siblings are all absolutely fine!

I think a lot comes down to personality type tbh. A bit like people agonising about the perfect age gap for their DC to be close as siblings when actually it's more down to their personalities how they get on with each other.

Mine as teens now. I was quite routine led with my first, and they went to nursery from 12 months. They are very robust both mentally and physically (which I put down to the amount of bugs they were exposed to at nursery, rather than how long they were BF). They are very independent.

I was more attachment style with DC2, who didn't go to nursery. They are very, very anxious (ND), was difficult to leave at pre school and primary, has struggled with everything. Can't imagine them ever leaving home as so reliant on me.

I think it's just the way they are, rather than parenting style that they have turned out the way they are.

I think it had an effect. I did (slightly accidentally due to his personality as a baby!) attachment parenting, bf till 2, coslept. He’s now 14, pretty secure, able to be open and emotional, kind and generally happy with good mental health, clever and doing well at school. This is all despite me splitting with his dad when he was v young and going between 2 homes. Partly I feel that my parenting style has mitigated some issues related to that as he knows he can always come to me and talk and I won’t lecture or get angry.

My eldest struggles a lot with MH/ low self esteem etc (he is also ND). My younger two are very confident and at ease in themselves.

It is utterly typical for a neurodivergent person to struggle with mental health issues such as depression and anxiety. Struggling with ND traits as you are navigating your way through life has a huge impact on a person's mental wellbeing, and don't forget it is every minute of every day - you don't get a break. If you don't know you aren't NT, you're going to wonder why you can't manage all the things that others seem to find effortless and it just has a terrible depressing effect. If all the other kids just "get" each other and seem to have a proper rapport with everyone (bar you), and you feel like an outsider who doesn't fit in and doesn't have the ability to interpret social situations and other people's body language, you're going to suffer psychologically.

It's a huge thing, it's not as small as how you fed one kid versus another or whether they had to sleep in their own bed. Those things are just tiny compared to being neurologically different...

I had my eldest at 16 and my younger two in my 20s and honestly my eldest hit all her milestones younger than her sisters and was a lot more sociable at their age than they are.

I don’t think I’ve parented them differently although eldest did have a rougher few early years (for reasons beyond my control)

I think as long as you are usually receptive to your baby’s needs, it’s better to teach them to eat and sleep at the right times as a baby than try to do this when they are older. If it means they cry a bit when they go down or are left to self settle in the night it really isn’t a problem as long as you’ve checked they don’t have a wet nappy etc.

Slings weren’t fashionable when I or my kids were young and we are all fine.

As long as you bf for a few weeks that’s fine - that’s what makes the difference. There’s no way I wanted to continue bf beyond 6 months despite being surrounded by yummy mummies who made breastfeeding their children until 1 year and well beyond their whole identity.

The thing that made a huge difference was reading to them regularly. It has really helped them through school. Also I wish I’d been able to not have my baby in nursery full time for a short period between ages 1 and 2. I wish I’d been able to be around more for her then. Not sure if it made a difference but I feel it may have done.

I’ve read that the most important things are reading regularly to them, having meals as a family and providing a stable loving two-parent home. Outcomes (educational, income, criminal) for kids from single parent homes are significantly less good than for those from conventional nuclear families.,Also teen friendships, which you can’t really control. That will make loads more difference to mental health than whether or not you carried them in a sling or breastfed a few months extra.

Thank you. This is really kind and helpful to hear

I co slept because I come from a culture that promotes co sleeping.
One kid super confident, one not so much. But both turned out well.
I think it made no difference. But I don'y believe in parenting gurus, books and all this obsessing about the right way to parent anyway.

Hi OP

I think if your eldest is neurodiverse this will have a much bigger effect on mental health and self esteem vs how they were fed or what routine they had as a baby. Neurodiversity is strongly associated with anxiety, depression and low self esteem, so unless you're trying to claim that you think baby routines cause neurodiversity, then it's much more likely that his struggles are linked to this than anything you did or didn't do as a parent.

Plenty of people parented their neurodivergent and neurological children in the same way and their mental health is very different

I was pretty similar to both of mine, and they had a similar home setup, although obviously one was a first, and DD was the second. They are as different as chalk and cheese. But DD18 is autistic (ASD1) and struggles with severe anxiety, and that is by far the biggest factor in her overall mental health. I always say she is the strongest person I know; she gets up and faces her demons every single bloody day - sometimes she faces them well, and sometimes she doesn't, but she still does it.

I don't think it made much difference. My DS has been through some seriously challenging situations and surgeries, and is suffering as a result. The fact he was bf to age 2 and we coslept made no difference to life being unfair and too much for a teenager to cope with.

There's academic research into attachment parenting, it is backed up I think.

The issue with asking for anecdotes is a) the parent is an unreliable and biased witness b) there's no direct comparison possible for any given child.

Overall I think everyone knows that caring consistently helps kids thrive.

He might have struggled even more without whatever security etc. he had as a young child. Sorry to hear he's suffering now

I’d be interested to see it and which specific parts of attachment parenting. Because one thing these discussions always throw up is ‘well that’s not gentle parenting’ (usually if someone is saying that they have tried something and it has not worked!)

I remember reading No Such Thing As Naughty and not getting past the first chapter where a child had a meltdown because her socks had to be over her knees and the mother asked her why. The child was able to explain she was frightened of hurting her knees again following a previous fall in the playground. Mother and child hugged and all was well. Except … that isn’t real life, is it?

I was a routine mum. My friend is an attachment mum or whatever it’s called.
My children are demonstrably more confident; no faffing at school drop off ever etc.

There are too many variables to make statements about knock on effects.

First and foremost children need love, they need happy parents who aren’t martyring themselves to their children.

I was never strict with routines because I was solo parenting (husband abroad and working all hours). I did it all.
My eldest had an eating disorder, or shall we say just never ate. I had to somehow get some porridge into him once a day and that was the easiest thing.
He was very very very attached to me and cried at drop offs from nursery till year 1. Every single dayyyyy.
When he turned 6 I had my second child. She was always more independant and a self soother.
She enjoyed trying all foods and eating by herself. Loved nursery every day and still enjoys school.
No strict routines for her either.

Now my eldest loves all kinds of food and my youngest will choose pasta or rice only.

Also my eldest makes friends easily and is confident and is starting to get embarassed of his old mum 😂😂. He’s only 11 right now.

I don’t regret my choice of upbringing but I do think children grow up to become what they see around them. We are easy going BUT education is very important and they get one to one with me daily on their education.
I like to believe they have become all rounders.

I don't think little differences like having a routine vs not, co-sleeping vs not, BLW etc etc make any difference at all to later outcomes. Although I do think that reading things like that when my DC were little did probably help form and shape my attitudes towards them as people and towards parenting in general. I do think that the general "split" when you're talking about really early parenting stuff is about being parent-led and in control vs baby-led and more observing, waiting, curiosity and I think those values have served me well all the way through parenting. Whereas perhaps parents who expect to be in control find it more difficult as DC get older? Who knows. You could say it goes the other way as well - that being too baby-led or child-led makes teens/young people less resilient or more anxious because if a parent is steering them and is more demanding, that tends to have better outcomes. I know the research says you essentially need both warmth AND demandingness.

It's more the overarching patterns, isn't it? Attachment isn't built by things like co-sleeping and breastfeeding, it's built by responsiveness and consistency of caregiver as a general thing.

Sleep training in itself isn't going to break attachment if the caregiver is responsive and consistent the rest of the time. OTOH sleep training as a decision because you are not physically able to be present and you have to keep leaving the baby with multiple different caregivers is probably more indicative of a pattern which might lead to an insecure attachment. But I understand that as long as they have A secure attachment, it's generally OK - it doesn't have to be mum. It could be dad, grandparent, nanny etc.

I did all the AP stuff but I never thought it was the only way to build attachment. TBH looking back on it, I know AP in itself isn't really a thing people talk about now, but perhaps the more "crunchy" style is how it's called now - this is really nothing to do with optimising for attachment because attachment isn't so fragile that you need to optimise anything, it's incredibly flexible. It's more to do with optimising for the best conditions for breastfeeding, which can be worth doing esp since our society tends to work against optimal BF functioning. But again it's not as though BF is doomed if you don't follow Sears' approach. It's possible to do it without following everything there but I do think it probably is the optimal set up and that might be useful information for some people.

I don't think BF makes a massive difference to health outcomes long term in a country like the UK, where we have abundant clean water, modern baby formula and electricity. It does make a difference and I think it's worth supporting but it doesn't make so much of a difference that it overrides other benefits such as if BF is making the mother ill with stress - in that case, it's likely not worth that trade off.

A really good book about the actual science of attachment if anyone is interested is The Power of Showing Up by Dan Siegel & Tina Payne Bryson.

One of my kids is a massive reader, the other not. I read to both daily. The one who doesn't read is very successful!
Mums need to stop beating themselves up. Kids have their own personalities. Not everything is our fault. In fact, most of it isn't unless we are actively abusive.
And stop reading " the stately homes' thread!

I only have one DS and raised him in same way as your eldest. We suspect he is slightly ND but undiagnosed. He’s very confident and has no MH issues. I think a lot of his confidence and resilience comes from his primary school and later joining the Army Cadet Force.

Mine are 26 and 18. Neither were bf - as far as I’m concerned m, assuming that bf confers confers great benefits is a load of bollocks. Kids pick up germs when they start nursery and their immune systems usually toughen up quick. Both of minee are strappingly fit and healthy adults. They are walking adverts for Cow & Gate. My bf goddaughters have had far more health problems since childhood.

Mine had broadly the same baby routines and went to nursery at the same age. What was different was that DS1 was an only DC for almost 8 years. He has always found it easier to make friends and cope with teasing m/ winding up than DS2, but whether that is down to having had to mix with other kids on holiday etc in his early years or whether it is shaped by genes - DS2 is very like my younger DB who also found it hard to make friends - I have no idea.

This, I think parents are more anxious nowadays as there is so much advice and apps for everthing tracking sleep to nappy changes.
I don't think there is any difference between breast feeding or formula you can't tell which children have had either.
I had my 4 from 1995 - 2000 they didn't have routines they just napped when tired where ever.
I didn't co sleep but when babies they were in a moses basket next to me at night then a cot next to me so I could reach out and place my hand on them. When they were older If they woke up in the night I had a cot mattress on the floor next to our bed they just came in and went straight to sleep. I did not even try at all to keep taking them back. It worked for us as we all got some sleep. I do think that it made them feel very secure as children can suffer from separation anxiety at night.
They seem to have turned out all okay all in full time jobs.

Co slept with all of mine and bf. Eldest has had depression and anxiety. Youngest ASD. There is so many more variables then bf or cosleeping to really tell. Friendship groups influence a child massively, personality ect. Don’t beat yourself up.

I think genetics personality and peers are the main issues

Both my kids are confident happy teens so this is my experience.

Breastfed exclusively.
Slept in cot next to us (Moses basket to start) for six months.
Fed on demand, didn't use bottles.
No sleep training but bedtime routine.
Weening was homemade and organic where possible - no sugar until one (birthday cake) and then no sugar/McDonalds etc until much older
Clear boundary parenting with explanations
You ate what was in front of you.
Absolutely no permissive or helicopter parenting
Routines were set by nursery/school/activities
Encouraged them to be independent and develop their own confidence
Encouraged resiliency and coping mechanisms - didn't rush to call the school, let them sort it out for themselves where they could etc
Gina Ford can suck it - no way would I ever listen to a woman on childrearing who didn't have children!!!!
Manners were a must
Swearing not allowed in the house
Talked to my kids a lot
Encouraged them to play sport and do what they love (oldest is elite sportsman now)
Proud of their behaviour not their accomplishments
Academics were important and not negotiable to try their best

Worked for us. In my humble opinion letting kids and encouraging them to be independent and not hover around them and solve all of their problems taught them to deal with uncomfortable situation and feelings.

I think things like co-sleeping or not or formula or not, or attachment parenting or not are neither here nor there. You love your child, you demonstrate your love, you set boundaries in a more or less predictable way, you look after their physical health by giving them healthy food, you educate them by showing them the world and reading to them, you teach them independence and curiosity and resilience by giving them loads of opportunities for free play. You keep more or less up to date with guidelines like nutrition, and things like screen exposure. You know, you just do your very best.

I do think good parenting should involve allowing your children to take risks. They always wore a helmet. But they did climb the odd tree, stitches were administered due to using play equipment not quite in the way it was intended. I held my breath on more than one occasion as they climbed a little too high for my liking, or hung upside down.

There were very few things I did 100% consistently.