Webchat with Daisy Goodwin, lunchtime, Tues 23 June

[GeraldineMumsnet]

As requested and promised, Daisy has accepted our invite and is coming on next Tuesday (exact time to be confirmed, but probably around 1pm). Get there early to bag your place.

i mean were you shocked when you saw the footage, i presume you weren't on hand for the filming, were you?

merrylegs the discontented pony also an excellent Ladybird Books parable about wanting greener grass...

Daisy - As you've just lost your creative director to Diverse (a rival indie for the non telly MNers) - I have a great format idea for you- why not do JOB IDOL and employ a replacement purely from Mumsnet auditionees?

There are no end of creative people here - with some top telly ideas. Great publicity and very refreshing to have a CD without a media background....

I thought CV was pretty hard core yes.

BUT If I thought those babies were in danger I would not have made the show.

I think that all the shock and rage you are expressing was covered in the programme. No one could be more eloquent about the problems with #CV than the other Claire in the show who advocated the Contiuun Concept.

i am surprised that none of you were interested in the fact that we presented the Contiuum concept as a feasible lifstyle for today rather than a mad hippy thing.

It would be great if you could answer Morningpaper's question.

"were you personally shocked by the methods used by CV?"

I think mothers will instinctively know what the best way to bring up their kids is

I sort of agree with this.... but I do think that mothers who are sobbing while they are trying to impose a certain routine are doing so because they are going against their instincts. And instincts are so important and repressing them like that is should always be challenged.

do you think anyone decided to follow her methods based on watching BUB?

Yes. In fact I think that the twins parents were on record as saying something like 'We've told all our friends and now they are all following it!'

The programme presented an outdated childcare theory as an acceptable one, and aligned it with Ford's routine, which was rather deceptive I think.

Oh yes, Merrylegs the discontented pony!!! I had only remembered Merrylegs from Anna Sewell's book.

Well, you is a horse of many colours and no mistake.

No, no I am the loyal pony in Black Beauty, the one ridden roughshod by the spoilt children but who ends their days in contented clover....(And please don't get me started on Ginger or I shall just jolly well blub).

100x You've never had any faith in me. Most parents would be encouraging and pleased their children are aiming for the top grade, but you're never satisfied. At least if I get a B you will be pleased.

ah yes here it is:

"Now friends who initially disapproved of our decision, and who are now expecting children of their own, are clamouring to follow our lead."

priyag that was Aitch's question and Daisy answered it

thanks for the support regarding elective home education-or personalised learning as some prefer- it did not go unnoticed and there a hundreds of people able to discuss anything more you'd like to know.xxx

The tiny babies who were forced to go twelve hours without a feed, were actually put in danger as a mother how could you not see this ?

Is there an argument within this debate between 100x and swedes?

Get a room girls!

I never got over Ginger's death.

I think the reason people here are more worried about the CV style of babycare and less engaged with the way the Continuum Concept was presented was purely and simply because of concern for the well-being of the babies, Daisy....to me, 20 mths on or whatever it is, this is what stands out as memorable. Continuum Concept would not risk being harmful or distressing to the babies it was being 'done to'.

The 'continuum concept' as shown on BUB was a perfectly feasible lifestyle for today.

Knowing what we do now about childhood development and psychology, the importance of attachment/bonding, unrestricted BF etc, I am more amazed by the fact that Claire Verity's 'methods' were given any credence at all.

actually i don't agree with you there, i thought deena was a bit of a sap and that Good Clare repeatedly choked in the face of Bad Clare.

lord, DG, i'm sure you're a good woman but i think that your programme taught those parents some very twisted lessons about being a parent. i think, as you imply, that we ALL saw that. i really do think that you experimented (with the idiot parents' full consent, of course) on newborn children, which i full stop have a moral issue with, but that in using CV you moved into an area that i'm personally happy with calling abusive. i'm sure that must be hard to stomach, though, as a mother yourself. but you went too far. it's only tv, those were real children and their real idiot parents and you set them up. imo.

(as a massive aside, you do know that there aren't more calories in hungry baby formula? the proteins are just less processed. i'm afraid deena was plumb wrong there).

That's an interesting point re preesentation of the continuum thing without mockery

I think your first point, though - that someone was pre-outraged on our behalf and therefore we don't need to be - won't assuage things. The issue isn't one of Balance, but of whether one of the approaches was damaging to a baby.

I think it would have been a different thing entirely had you made an ob doc about CV. Then you would have been in a far stronge rposition I think. It's the fact Ent-ness of it that sticks in our collective craw I think

Daisy - I have just discovered a renewed interest in poetry after taking a degree in English Lit many years ago. Trouble is, my brain is not as - erm - active as it used to be. Can you recommend anything that's accessible and not too clever (but would still impress my Oxbridge friends when I quote bits?)

Yes, what tiktok said: the continuum concept is about meeting babies' needs. I don't see why it would be upsetting or controversial. Nor do I see why anyone might NOT think it's a "feasible lifstyle for today". Whereas the Verity method was not even one that EXISTED on the modern childcare spectrum.