Anyone read The Observer, 'Guru's advice to parents: relax, have fun'

[JoniRules]

www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/may/15/parenting-less-fuss-more-fun

Did anyone read this? What did you think? I really agreed with him, as this is what I broadly think anyway. Why force your child into all these after school activites if they don't enjoy them?
I think we can all be a bit uptight these days about parenting. Myself included; like I get quite uptight about TV watching and healthy food eating, when maybe I could relax a bit about it.
I thought it was a breath of fresh air actually after the likes of 'tiger mom' epidemic

Oh by the way how do you post a link so it's not the whole address but just 'here'

I've read an article from him before. Quite honestly he sounds like the sort of parent who sits back letting his children get up to whatever mischief, with his excuse being it's nature rather then nurture that is significant.

I will find the other article.

here is the article I've previously read.

I was perfectly put off when he said he used to leave his twins to cry at 10 minutes at a time to get them sleeping through the night.

I agree with him in both articles.

Well I wouldn't leave my children to cry and never have done, but I like the overall theme of what he is advocating i.e relax a bit more about parenting. I don't agree that it sounds as though he lets his kids get up to mischief. I would need to read his book first though.
If I think back to when I was a young child in the 70s, (feel old just writing that sentence), of course there was none of the childhood activity industry that there is today. My mum was fairly relaxed about things.
I just think that I would benefit from being more relaxed myself

'Someone had to feed our infant twins in the middle of the night, and that someone was me. '

is he saying his wife never fed the twins at night? I wonder how his wife would respond to that.

I did leave my children to cry for short periods, employing the same methods as he describes....going back in for reassurance then leaving again.

I have three children, and all of them were sleeping through the night by six months. It worked for me. At 9, 3 and 2 now, they all continue to go to bed without any fuss and sleep through.

It's great!

'But twin research has another far more amazing lesson: With a few exceptions, the effect of parenting on adult outcomes ranges from small to zero.'

I don't agree with that. You only have to read posts on mumsnet to see what a devastating effect that bad parenting can have on children.

I like what he says, but am wary of this thread becoming (yet another) parenting competition.

Thanks for posting the link OP

I have left DD2 to cry for a little bit if she was in that fretful, really overtired, going to fall asleep any second crying mode. Then me going in would just disturb her...
And actually by responding the DS and going in every time he cried, staying with while he fell asleep, it took 3.5 yrs for him to fall asleep by himself. Prior to that we stayed with him and either me or DH would have to stay for up to 1.5 hr in the room in the evening. In the end we had to leave him to cry for a bit anyway to make him sleep by himself. (We were first time parents as you can see!)

But to get back to the article, I think it's great!

belgo i don't think that the writer is going to the extreme of saying that 'neglecting' your children to the extent that it is bad parenting is a good thing at all. Isn't he just saying 'relax' a bit, don't need to keep pushing your kids....again I need to read the book really.
But I really think that it is a welcome antidote. There are so many books that tell you what to do and I remember being a first time parent and feeling so anxious about whether I was doing the right thing, and reading books that advocated this or that and getting throughly confused.
When actually what I was doing and am doing is actually alright. And what i think as 'bad' parenting probably won't impact on my DCs...it's about balance.
And I really don't believe in sending my kid to after school activites and this and that class if he doesn't want it, just to keep him busy

I'm not being competitive - I'm simply stating that in my opinion and in my experience, leaving babies to cry isn't wrong, in response to another poster saying she wouldn't.

I have friends who have spent eons struggling with getting their kids to go to bed, go to sleep, and stay asleep, because they could not bear to leave them to cry. Lying beside them night after night, sitting in the room with them etc etc....wasting their child free evenings hanging about in a kiddy's bedroom.

Babies soon learn to fall asleep by themselves if you only let them.

I am very much of the relaxed parenting persuasion myself....I like the article.

Yay Relaxed parenting!!! Boy do I need to relax....seriously i would be happier and therefore my family

I must say, I feel that by making parenting into such an art (I don't mean here taking children to music lessons but thinking hard about how to play with them to foster their self-confidence, how to deal with conflict etc), I feel often that I just can't keep it up! I once read an article (can't remember who by) where she said her aim was for her children not to end up in psychotherapy when they grow up as a result of her parenting. I don't think this is possible, tbh! It seems to bring up children so they don't have any "issues" as a result of my parenting is a pipe dream. They are always going to have not developed sufficient self-confidence as a child or eat too much because as a child the culture at the dinner table caused them to develop an unhealthy relationship to food or not learnt sufficient self-discipline or whatever. I often feel like I need to parent like an air traffic controller or an interpreter - work a half hour shift and then swap over so that someone "fresh" and concentrated can come along while I recover before going in for my next shift of perfection.
From this perspective, I think I need someone to hit me over the head and remind me that I do actually LIVE with my children - they are part of my life and I am part of theirs and I can't have the same relationship with them that some peripatetic teacher would have, who would see them for one hour a week, and be able to use all kinds of approaches and techniques!

simic have to rush off now but liked what you said and agreed. Need to read more fully soon

Was is Freud who said "There is no such thing as a good parent"?
I am not suggesting we should shrug everything off, but we must accept that the best we can do is the best we can do and sometimes we still screw up sometimes. And there is not ONE good way of parenting, IMO there is as many ways as there are parents and children.
Pictish totally agree agree with your post re-settling to sleep. Children WILL cry, the quicker we get used to it as parents the better. (I am not advocating neglect by the way IYSWIM)

Twin mum here(non identical),aunty to twins(identical).Totally agree with the author. My sister's twins are identical in every way,my twins are different in every way. Also her twins are very like her,mine like me and dp(obviously),completely different to their cousins.I'm a strong believer in what will be,will be.

He's not talking about bad parenting(verging on abuse) but relaxed parenting like our parents did. Seems to me there are a whole lot more social problems these days.One has to wonder if all this obsessing,forums,books,"studies" achieve anything(other than worrying parents and making raising children more stressful)-I suspect not.

And don't get me started on the crying thing. Once you've had twins and lived through night after night of complete tandem stereo bawling then judge.

Pictish totally agree .

I know it's a staged photo but there's no way we could lounge on the sofa without the kids asking us to join in the game. They're quite good at amusing themselves while we get on with stuff but they seem to think an idle parent is one who needs entertaining.

Depends how much you tell them to bugger off. I tell my DS I'm busy if I'm reading the paper and he usually lets me get on with it. I can't doze on the sofa unless he's watching telly though

Do you mean the more you tell them, the better they get at leaving you alone?

Yes. Well it (sometimes) works for me. Depends how involved DS is in what he's doing really. If he's bored, he will come and jump on me :o

I read a really good book (well, not brilliantly written but interesting) called The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker, who makes a good case for environment and parenting having far less impact than we commonly think it does. It went against everything I ever learned on my liberal arts uni course but I found myself surprisingly convinced by him....

He draws lots of evidence from twin studies. One of his conclusions IIRC is that identical twins raised apart from birth have consistently been demonstrated to be more similar to each other in personality terms than fraternal twins raised together.

Unfortunately Caplan's science is completely wrong and hugely outdated. All the evidence now points to the fact that genes perform differently in different environments. In fact there's a whole new science called epigenetics dedicated to investigating how genes are affected by their environment. It's utterly false to suggest that your child will turn out the same way no matter how you parent it 'because it's all in the genes'. (Rather 'sciency' article here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics). The new work on neuroplasticity (the adaptibility of the brain) also supports the nurture argument. In any case, I think it's something we know instinctively, otherwise we wouldn't make efforts to be good parents!

Also am naturally suspicious of anyone who's described as a parenting guru. Unless you've got about seventeen children of your own, all of whom you raised yourself 24 hours a day and all of whom have turned out well, I don't think you can call yourself a guru. Dr Sears probaby comes closest.