Claire Verity being investigated by Channel 4

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...for apparently falsifying some qualifications.

Personally I'd prefer that they investigate her for pushing an approach to baby care which went out with the ark.

exactly lissie.

Were the twin babies happy though kittywitch? If babies have a need for cuddles and human warmth and that is denied to them, how can they not be affected? Aitch, I agree with you that they looked fat and me and DP also thought they looked uninterested too

Envy? Yeah, ok, whatever.

But fwiw, I agree with you about the balancing act between the needs of the parent and the needs of the child.

The whole point is that there is no balance. The child's needs are entirely ignored because the parent wants 'time to themselves'.

You may well loathe getting up in the night (I'm not crazy keen on it myself) but you do it, don't you? Because your child needs you. That's not matyrdom. That's parenting.

richarddawkins, as usual you speak the truth, you silver fox.

That interview with Rani is sad. She is implying that unless you are on a strict routine you won't enjoy your baby's early months. Well, that's rubbish. I hugged cuddled and kissed my new baby all the time, and fed on demand, and I loved every moment of it. Of course there odd times when I was a bit overwhelmed, but I was so in love with my baby girl, and found everything she did fascinating and thrilling. She turned 1 recently and I was really happy, but the day was also tinged with nostalgia and a little bit of sadness that her tiny baby days are gone forever...

They change so quickly, I think it's sad when parents don't relish and enjoy their babies. Once its gone you can't get it back.

And how can you bond with a baby and get to know them if yuo never hold them or gaze at them?

People who think they can keep their old life once they have a baby are deluded.

Your old life might trot along side you new life for a while but its not the same. You can't have that old life back, giving birth changes you into a different person.

Your priorties change, or at least they should.

read this.

Ds4 was 1 week old here

Thats what its meant to be like....not ignoring them. Not leaving them to cry.

But savouring every minute of them.

(God I'm broody)

missed it first time round, but had to post!

Having kids DOES change your life, getting up in the night is one if the less pleasurable aspects but it's all part and parcel of the role of parent. I've posted before that the total obsession new paretns get about the sleeping thru the night thing causes so much anxiety and consternation and a lot of it is driven by ridiculous competitiveness between new mums and mum and baby groups (advice avoid if you hear this kind of tittle tattle).

The "advice" espoused by CV was emotionally abusive to the babies end of. Babies need continous sensitive emotional regulation from their parents in those first few months to from the neuro chemical pathways that regulate arousal, pleasure, trust and security. If unregulated the cortisol nuerones go into overdrive and the baby may be living in a constant state of neuro chemical arousal even tho he/she appears calm on the outside ( apologies if I've got the exact A+P wrong but this is a potted version). This can happen with babies who're ignored, not made eye contact with and not cuddled when distressed.

The idea that a baby a few weeks old can be "manipuilative" makes me seethe TBH!!

have just taken my 13 month dd to the park for a walk. The fascination on her face looking at the leaves and the plants and the contented look she has being in the fresh air is worth any life change IMO. Sorry to be gushy but little pleasure like that seem to have a lot more meaning. Not boring at all

Note to new parents a calm baby that never cries is not neccessarily a contented one.

With a newborn, I think it is far less of a balancing act: you kind of have to do what nature intended, don't you? You have to hold them and feed them and love them, and those babies weren't getting that. That's what her method is: it is not loving a child or meeting its needs with any degree of care. People are angry that this was presented as something that's absolutely fine.
Personally, I'm all for a bit of routine, up to a point. It's usually clear when parents are getting overwhelmed by the needs of a baby or when a baby is getting treated with rigidity - and we have argued until the cows come home about that on MN, where is the line etc. I like the middle ground myself because of who I am and what my little family is like, but that middle ground will shift, dramatically even, depending who you are.
From what was on that programme, though: there was no room for those babies, no accommodation towards them. It was a bloody shame.

Claire Verity made a great deal of having 'a string' of qualifications in her media appearences, and it now appears in national newspapers that the qualifications - including a business degree she claimed to have - seem to be false. This is not libellous - we are reporting the news.

I am not surprised in any way, and am just glad they did the digging. This is nothing to do with her nannying techniques, or whether they were harmful or not (and there are many people with qualifications who would state quite strongly that they were) but to do with honesty and integrity and trust. If someone comes into your home to help you care for your babies, it seems to me to be supremely important that you know they are not a liar. I would also prefer them to belong to a professional body with standards and ethics, so that if they did turn out to practise unsafely, or to be dishonest, they might be called to account without me having to take some sort of legal action.

I actually agree that a newborn needs and should have oodles of cuddles and love, of course so should we all baby, child or adult. I could not leave my baby rto cry and have, indeed do feed on demand, I also leave them to cry when I've had enough.
I did see the last prog and thought the twins looked fine.
You honestly can't make a sensible link between them being a bit fat and the routine they were put on! I think the survey would need to involve a bigger spectrum of families than that!
The children's needs were not entirely ignored though were they?

I know first hand how bad for people this method is - my mother was brought up in the Truby King method. As a result my mum has difficulty showing affection to me or my brothers and comes across as a very cold person. I think the only time my mum ever told me she loved me was when I was having a miscarriage Luckily I was my daddy's princess , so he more than made up for mum's inability to lavish affection on me.
DH and I considered very carefully about having a baby, and waited until it felt right for us to do so. This baby will take over our lives, not all ways for the better(sleepness nights etc.) but it will certainly enrich us and I look forward to having a strong bond between baby, me and DH.
These parents who try to make sure that their babies cause as little disruption to their lives as possible seem to me the sort who see their child as some kind of status symbol.
The way I look at it is that DH and I have had plenty of years to do what we want to do and to put ourselves first. Now is our time to not be so self-centred and to put someone else in the centre of our lives, the way our parents did for us.

what are you talking about? i can do what i like, thanks. i think that they were fat, likely because they'd been force-fed double measures of formula to get them to sleep and had been deprived of it at other times to get them to succumb to the routine, which had rendered them disconnected and glaikit-looking. i can think Whatever I Like about those children and their parents, because they were on my telly in my front room on display and asking me to have an opinion on what they were doing.

I really hope that this doesn't get turned into a "burn the witch" scenario where Claire Verity gets all the blame. Channel 4 and the production company were responsible for making sure she was qualified before letting her loose on vulnerable families with tiny babies. They must deal with people who are desperate to get on TV all the time and who will lie to do so - it's up to them to spot them. I'm sure both families would have trusted the production team to ensure she was above board but it looks like the telly execs were so impressed that she shagged Mick Jagger that they looked no further.

I wonder if either of the two families she was involved with will think of suing Channel 4. I certainly would.

Aitch, yep, you can think what you like. However, the context in which it was made your opinion made a link between how they looked and the routine they were under.
As I said the sample needs to be bigger than one family.

My Mum was also a Truby King baby and she's a poor soul who can't connect with people, find it difficult to show love and is lacking in empathy.

I spent a lot of time crying watching this programme seeing how my Mum was treated and knowing the terrible effects it has had on my family.

Why should the families sue? They were told what was going to happen and gave their consent - they didn't have to do it! They didn't have it done to them, they took part.

Agree that C4 should be cacking their pants about the backlash to this.

Some of those programme-makers are going to be when they finally do have children and realise what they did.

i make that link, happily. we watched them being force-fed and now they are noticeably fatter than the demand-fed babies. QED.
i know of big demand-fed babies, of course, but that's not the point. those babies were force-fed milk, why woudl they not be fat?

They should sue Channel 4 for using an unqualified woman to give advice on how to treat tiny babies. I bet that they gave the impression to the families that it was all above board and she was qualified. What they failed to mention was that it was an NVQ1 in Randy Old Pop Star Shagging.

daisy goodwin has two kids... and mummy issues a mile wide.

Which of their needs were taken into account then?

The need to have close physical contact with their parents? No - these babies were rationed to a pitifully tiny amount of loving contact with their parents each day.

The need to sleep when their bodies needed sleep and to eat when their bodies needed nourishment? No - they were forced into a routine that paid no attention to either physiological fact or individual requirements.

The need to be socialised into a warm, loving family? No - the parents were barred from allowing their own families to visit, or even phone! (thus isolating the parents and preventing any possible dissent from people who actually knew what they were talking about, perhaps?)

The need to be able to communicate in the only way they could, i.e. by crying? No - they soon stopped that when they worked out it didn't get them anywhere...

fortunately for channel four, they've all made public statements in favour of the CV methods.

kittywitch, you can't have seen the programme where the twins were deliberately allowed to become 'starving' (the actual word was used) and then over-fed to the point at which the larger bottle was being forced upon them. Or when they were woken up and placed on the floor to scream.

I too think it's a leap to say what these babies were like at 9 months from seeing them for a few moments on TV, but it is certainly possible to have an opinion on what they looked like. It is entirely consistent with ignoring babies' needs for comfort and cuddles that they do end up unresponsive and emotionally damaged, too.

think my Dad was Truby King baby, very emotionally detached, struggles with expression and warmth and has had awful probs with anxiety and depression over the years. he's a very kind and caring man tho, just can't "let it out".

can remember my Grandma being a cold fish, critisising my mum for cuddling my little sis when she hurt herself .

the parents on the prog were fully signed up to it and lauded praise on it afterwards! Do think C4 holds a large portion of the responsibility too and should be held accountable.