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.

What actual evidence is there of harm from controlled crying/crying it out? As far as I am aware, there haven't been any scientific studies using a control group for comparison.

I agree with LeQueen that everyone in the family has value, not just the baby - and the family she describes, where the baby was only sleeping 1.5 hours at a go, clearly needed to sort out their child's sleep issue. Even if you argue that the parents should just suck it up and stop complaining about being tired, that child was seriously sleep deprived, and that would have been causing far more damage than a couple of days of crying it out, in my opinion.

Bubblymummy - what you do works for you - and that's great, but it is not a licence for you to try to make other parents feel like shit, by implying that they are selfish, uncaring or neglectful!

Plus, what if you have more than one child? How do you soothe lots of children to sleep - wouldn't that take up your entire evening?

Ok Bubbley I see you stated that your child slept for 7 hours at a stretch and then some more, but the fact that at 2 years old he was unable to sleep through the night suggests you'd kind of bolloxed up the old sleep thing to me. A 2 year old is not a baby.
Actually I don't even care about other people's sleep habits - even if I privately do think they're mad. Or how they feed their children, or what time they put them to bed. God why am I even on mumsnet?!
But I do object to this hand-wringing talk of 'neglect'.

That's ok chellesgirl. It was just nice to read s comment that seemed to understand what I was trying to say!

Stayingdavid. Lequeen was talking about leaving a 5 month old to CIO. I understand that lack of sleep is hard but at 5 months old it isn't exactly unusual for a baby to wake during the night. I think in this case a solution more sensitive to the needs of the baby could have been sought. Also, there is quite a lot of research being done into the effects of cc. I will try to post some links later but I'm using the iPhone ATM

Thanks monkey. Don't think we bolloxed it up at all actually. None of lost any sleep, ds can go to sleep by himself no problem and we never had to resort to sleep training methods. Win win win for us AND nothing for us to beat ourselves up over either.

Secondcoming. NCSS encourages you to meet the needs of the baby by going to them when they cry and recognising that they are crying for a reason: communication not manipulation. By meeting their needs they become more secure and there are gentle methods that it suggests to help form good sleeping habits without having to resort to cc. Admittedly, tending to your baby does require a bit more effort than leaving them to cry (even at intervals) but the result is the same- a sleeping baby - without putting them through the stress of cc which some people would prefer to avoid.

Firstly he was sleeping 10-12 hours. Please read my posts.

Secondly, yes it does have a detrimental effect on them. I will post links later

Thirdly. It is neglect to leave a child of 5 months unattended to CIO. Neglect is failing to respond to a child. At 5 months it is just horrible. Sorry lequeen I am never going to agree with you that it is acceptable.

Leaving a 5 month old to cry alone for even a few minutes is not something I could do.

I never left DD to cry she is a great sleeper.

The thing is some children are shit sleepers. You can try everything and it might not work but if they are shit sleepers you owe it to them to at least try to sort it out.

co-sleeping and dare i say it, extended bf can all prevent a child from developing good sleep habits.

dd had colic, we patted and rocked, and hushed and shushed and cuddled for hours and hours day and night to no avail. when that subsided i did the shush pat thing from the baby whisperer. which took 45-1 hour to work, every time she needed a nap, twas torture.

with ds our 2nd I've put him drowsy but awake from a few weeks old. sometimes he's drifted off, sometimes he moans and shouts for a couple of minutes but he goes off on his own. I don't jump everytime he makes a noise. if his grumbling escalates to proper crying i go to him, cuddle, back down try again. or sometimes just a rub on his tummy. on the couple of ocassions i've done the rocking patting thing he's just ended up screaming for longer because of over stimulation and over tiredness. So 1+hours of a crying frustrated baby OR 2 mins of a bit of shouting?

I know which one suits our family best.

Minx. Do you have anything to support your claim that cosleeping/ extended bf (please clarify what you mean by extended btw) creates bad sleep habits? I think most cosleepers would argue that point.

Argue against

only the prfessional opinion of all the child mental health professionals i work with.

it's common sense, if your toddler is waking up in the night to comffort snack from the breast he's getting into bad sleep habits. I cringe when I see "oh my 2.5 year old still wakes up 3 times a night to feed" posts on here as if that's ok. It's really not!!

One of dds friends is nearly 4 and wakesup 4x per night to bf. It has destroyed her mother, she's put on 7 stone. She's a single parent and her life is wrecked. Something should have been done about it before now, but her Mum refuses to see the hv for help thinking she'll just magically sleep through when she starts school.

Have any of them coslept?

Lequeen. No sleep training is recommended under 6 months. I don't think anyone recommends CIO at any stage which is what your friends used, especially before 6 months.

I'm not sure what you are interpreting waking as. He didn't get up and start running around or anything. Sometimes, rarely by the age of two but still occasionally, he would stir in his sleep or call out. He didn't wake fully because he was close enough for us to settle him before he did. In any case it did not make any difference to him during the day - he disn't remember waking. He wasn't tired. He developed normally and he is very intelligent. So it worked out fine for all of us. I am not saying that everyone should co-sleep. It was the easiest option for us because of our house layout as I explained earlier. All I am saying is that cc is not the only solution and sleep training- by whatever method is not recommended under 6 months.

Secondcoming. If you're refering to ncss the idea is that you don't have to always get out of bed. You use gentle methods to encourage sleep without havinv to resort to cc. Ultimately you won't have to get out of bed because you have solved the sleep problem but without leaving them crying.

It's cosleeping that's the main problem. Most of the articles that I've read come to the conclusuion that it leads to a dangerous level of dependency that effects social development in later years.

I'd be interested to read that. Can I have a link please?

Lequeen. When my dh needed a good nights sleep he went into the spare room for the night. Similarly, my friend who is a doctor would have slept in the spare room if she had to work the next day. There are solutions that do not involve leaving a young baby to cry. No excuse IMO

Or earplugs for your friends dh if they don't have a spare room.