parenting pet peeves...

[bubbleymummy]

I know I'm going to get flamed for this but I just don't care - I have to vent somewhere after a weekend of smiling and nodding and keeping my mouth shut!

Here is a list of 'parenting' traits that I absolutely hate!

Giving babies sugar - dessert/pudding/biscuits/cake - they do not need it - they are not missing anything and they are the reason that your child is already overweight!

Shovelling food into tiny babies, scooping it up and shoving it back in when the baby's tongue pushes it out while discussing the baby's excema, constipation, tummy upsets etc

Giving toddlers fizzy drinks such as Coke and letting them run madly around before screaming at them and complaining about how badly behaved they are.

Giving children calpol because it's been a 'long day' or because they have a slight sniffle or even a hint of a temperature or just because 'they like the taste'!.

controlled crying / cry it out - I hate this at any stage but I DESPISE it in children under 6 months. I don't care if your child has been sleeping through since 5 weeks - it is bloody cruel!

and breathe....

Ok feel free to flame me or alternatively add your own pet peeves!

Disclaimer : I by no means consider myself to be a perfect parent and I could fill several threads with my own parenting flaws.

I'm not implying it's the only way at all. And I REPEAT I'm not talking about babies, who do need assistance to get to sleep. If you're still assisting them in toddlerhood you're doing them a diservice.

Dd is 3.5 she started falling asleep by herself without any sleep training at 3 months, she slept through the night at 4. Great. She wakes up now and shouts for us, we go in, remedy the problem and she goes straight back to sleep. She has spurts of doing this every couple of months or so, prob due to dreaming. If it became chronic we would do something about it, probably with rewards/sticker charts or similar. She's clearly too old for cc. The fact that she didn't start waking uo again until she was 3 indicates its a developmental thing and hopefully she'll grow out of it.

DS is 5 months, he dozed off to sleep by himself straight away. However he wakes up more in the night than dd ever did and is generally more unsettled. We're going to wait until he's fully weaned, gradually reduce the amount of oz he has in his night bottle and if that doesn't work we will do cc, prob when he's about 1.

A sleep deprived family (not talking about children with special needs here which is different all together) is not a functioning family. The parents bed is for them, as a couple.

TBH I think it says more about the emotional make-up of the Mother than the child who co-sleep for years and years, and is a lot more to do with their emotional needs. Unless it really is a case of trying everything and having failed including sleep training.

slept through at 4 months not 4 years, she's not even 4 yet!

I think I said in my previous post that it SHOULD be addressed. If you aren't a fan of co-sleeping, there are plenty of other methods - Elizabeth Pantley offers a few or you could just visit the sleep board on here to see different people's solutions.

I think people just choose CC as the quickest method to getting what they want and as a result it is being used at earlier and earlier stages. Why do we have these ridiculous expectations of our children? Why should a child be able to settle themselves by a certain age (6 months, 1 year etc) as said, all children are different and some may require a longer time to learn than others. Why is it ok to ignore these needs?

Pah
I know when DS is ready for bed. I know when he is tired, I make sure he is fed, clean and cuddled, then I put him to bed and he cries a bit until he goes to sleep. He cries cos he wants to get back up and play. I cannot imagine what the alternative would be - he doesn't like to go to sleep being held, if left to go to sleep in his own time it wouldn't be til 10pm and he's still cry, if I sat in his bedroom til he went to sleep he would still cry even worse! The only thing that gets him to sleep without crying is putting him in the pram covered completely with a blanket (like a parrot) and ricking it. Useful for visiting people but not a long term solution....

Seriously, what do people do if they don't do CC?

I mean rocking

kat - how old is your DS?

DS1 fed to sleep/rocked to sleep for a while and when he was a bit older would have a feed and then lie beside me and fall asleep and then I would put him in his (bedside) cot.

DS2 (11 months) will go to sleep with music/rocking or patting his bum. Once he looks sleepy I take him straight to bed and he's usually down between 5-15 mins.

Amen to LeQueen.
Children need sleep. It is good for them.

LeQueen, I just adjusted by expectations for my son. He clearly wasnt ready to sleep through for 7 hours before he was 2. What rulebook says he should? Actually co-sleeping meant that it didn't disrupt my husband and I and we all got a good night's sleep. If DS woke up during the night, he was within arms reach if he needed to be comforted back to sleep. I met my child's needs - did your friends do what was best for her child or what was best for her without looking at other solutions and becasue she wanted a quick fix. YEs - ignoring a baby will shut them up when they realise no one is going to come - that's great parenting - well done to them.

oops - my expectations

exactly where have i said children don't need sleep?

There are a lot of parents whose child has sleep problems because they start denying them afternoon naps etc so that they go to bed early. This means that the child is then overtired and fussy and upset when it comes to bedtime and difficult to settle. Seriously, you woudl benefit from reading Elizabeth Pantley's book for a start if you think abandoning your child and witholding soothing from them is the best way to get them to sleep.

My DD kept her afternoon nap until she was quite old, akshully. Apparently, I kept mine until the week before I started school, so I saw no harm.

I'm going now as this is turning into a fight and I'm supposed to be doing paperwork.

If you can function without (decent, uninterrupted) sleep, bubleym, then all power to you. I can't, and neither can my DH or DC. DD(3) thinks she would like to sleep in our bed. If we let her, then none of the three of us get a decent nights sleep and she gets too warm, fidgets, kicks, etc, etc - and DS(7) will get jealous when he comes down in the morning and finds her there. DD objects to being sent/taken back to her bed, but once there she settles in ~2 mins (because she knows from experience that we won't back down) and sleeps through. Letting either DC sleep with us ends up being detrimental to all of us.

(oh, and my DC kept their naps until they decided there were more interesting things to do in the afternoon! - just under 2, in both cases)

LEQueen - your friends baby was 5 months old!!! She coudl have been waking because she was hungry/thirsty/teething or just needed a cuddle because she was a BABY. Sleep training of any description is not recommended before six months and I'm never going to agree with leaving a child that age to cry itself to sleep. It is NEGLECT - haven't you seen the NSPCA ads?

BTW - DS wasn't fussy about who put him to bed or who gave him a hug if he woke during the night as long as someone was there IF he needed them.

he's 18mo. He has more or less slept through since 4.5mo, which he did by himself which is why we stopped co-sleeping.
I have done CC since he was about 6mo. It's not a magic solution, he doesn't always go to sleep by himself without crying, but he often does. When he cries I leave him for periods and if he doesn't go off by himself I go back in, give a bottle of milk, shh and cuddle, etc, then leave again. He is always asleep within 20 minutes.

I should add that patting him while he goes to sleep will also not work. Since about 10mo when he could stand by himself he has refused to be put to lie down in the cot. You have to put him in sitting up and he goes to sleep bum in the air on top of the blankets. If you try to lie him down he yells.

All babies are different and my DS is quite independent and in our case, CC is helpful and I do not believe in the least damaging. DS is well attached to his parents and his behaviour is as you would expect of an emotionally healthy toddler. If there was a hint that anything we did was disrupting or damaging his attachment and bonding we would stop it. But DS feeling a bit cross and upset for 5 minutes doesn't really bother me, sorry. Likewise if I say 'no' and he cries he doesn't get a cuddle. Toddlers express annoyance through tears and I don't think it's necessary, or desirable, to try to stop those tears at any cost.

I'm not a heartless bitch by the way, I do know the difference between tears of pain, tears of upset and tears of pissed offness.

LOL - knew the 'rod' expression would surface sometime! I don't think of my son as a rod - he is a child who should be looked after and have his needs met. It may not always be easy but that is what parenting is all about.

Where on earth have I said anything about soothing for ages/crooning for hours? Mine only take a few mins max - even less in the middle of the night. I don't think you need an algorithm to see when your child is tired - unless you require rules rather than common sense for everything? I think once you figure out what your child wants/needs you can settle them pretty quick - without leaving them to cry themselves to sleep.

I stopped dds afternoon nap when she started waking up at 2am and refusing to go back to sleep until 4am! . She was 2.5 I think. she immediately went back to sleeping through again. Yes for a few weeks she was crabby by 5pm but do you suggest bubbley that we stay awake for 2 hours every night to soothe her? What nonsense.

An average 2 year old needs more than 7 hours sleep in one sitting otherwise it could affect their development. Sleep deprived children don't grow or learn properly, fact.

And as LeQueen rightly points out, what if you can't be in bed with your dcs? Poor dd would have had a right old time of it the night I went into labour with ds if she'd been reliant on being with me in our bed for sleep. I left at midnight and wasn't hmoe until 2 nights later . As it was she slept peacefully, on her own in her own bed and Iwas able to wander round the house coping with contractions at will until I went to hospital.

Not at all LeQueen- i just think you want me to agree that CIO for a 5 month old is in some way acceptaable and I will definitely not be doing that.

No way minx - if changing the nap suited you then fine - you know how much crabbiness in the evening you can deal with I just know that crabbiness can sometimes impact on the ability of the child to settle at night. DS2 is a perfect example of that!

Also, DS didn;t just sleep for 7 hours a night - usually about 10-12 AND he's perfectly grown and very well developed. He dropped his nap around 2.5 as well - when I was pregnant with DS2 and could really have done with an opportunity to slink off to bed in the afternoon!

DS was in a bedside cot and then a bed in our room. TBH we may very well have been able to put him in his own room sooner but because of the layout of our house it wasn't practical (our room is at the end of a long hall and up stairs from the other bedrooms - too far away to be staggering in the middle of the night!

co-sleeping doesn't mean you have to have them in the bed with you.