effects of CC

[papillon]

i just found this review in amazon.. does anyone agree ... disagree? I have heard of Gina Ford but not Elizabeth Pantley

...Australia the Association of Infant Mental Health have issued a warning against the method of "controlled crying" which she advocates as it can lead to psychological problems!! Gina's job is to train babies, she has no interest in the child's mental or physical (scheduled feeds can lead to dehydration and failure to thrive) well being for the future. She just wants her money for her quick fix methods! She's not even a mother herself, just a baby trainer. Babies aren't meant to be trained, they need to be nurtured and loved and leaving a baby to cry until it believes it has been abandoned and then shuts up to conserve energy is not my idea of caring for a loved one! Dissociation and learned helplessness are not pyschological problems i wish to instill in my baby for the sake of a full nights sleep! This woman makes me so cross! I second the reader (dated the 7th of november) who suggests a far kinder book to look at - "The no-cry sleep solution" by Elizabeth Pantley. At least she has had children so has some idea what she is talking about!

sorry about the corny ending - feel the love ha ha ha

Bloss- Yes it is true I would rather follow my own instincts than someone elses to bring up my kids. I feel that I am quite capable of deciding what they do and when they do it. If I have a problem then I am more than happy to listen to advice but I wouldnt want to live mine and my childrens lives by a book. GF is just one opinion amongst hundreds and of course following her will work for some but I take great pleasure in following my own ways. Just cos gf says this or that doesnt mean to say we have to do it.

When I said how did people manage before cc what I meant was people before our grandparents and other cultures. For example in the Asian culture cosleeping has been the norm and also babies are far more carried by slings.
cc is not the only method for dealin.g with babies.

hercules you are right we are all capable of making our own decisions but Im sur we all read things we agree with and things we dont, so to a certain extent that is a decision, and as mums we all take on board the advice that we think would best suit our children and ourselves, and I know your saying you make all your own choices about your children and you do, because so do I. But I DECIDED that I wanted my dd in a routine and it just so happens that I DECIDED that I liked GFs routine and I DECIDED that I dont agree with a lot of advice my hv gave me or what I read in the Dr Mirriam Stoppard books so there were three decisions I made and I went with MY INSTINCT not GFs, not my HV and not Dr Mirriam Stoppard just MINE

Fair enough Wog
Don't understand the bit about hvs though, after all we all know they are the true fountain of all knowledge

lol

And dare I say it...
Having read GFs bit in a lower link about getting them used to the cot I am going to start that with dd s shes outgrown her moses basket for downstairs.

So you see although I dont want to follow her for everything I dont knock a bit of advice when I have a problem.

(doesnt mean I am a followere though)

Does that make me a closet gfer?

doesn't all of this come down to how people use the advice though. If someone reads GF and thinks "oh sounds interesting I'll give it a go and if it doesn't work I'll try something else" then no problem. The problem arises if someone tries her, it doesn't work and they they think they must be doing something wrong. rather than gF just isn't for them or their baby.....

Thanks Bloss, yes he's a very happy little chap, we are very grateful we've got one who doesn't cry very much (only when he wants food and he wants it NOW could never even wait for me to unclip my feeding bra!) ... but I have found this thread fascinating and sympathise with those of you who've had babies who cry lots and don't sleep through. Would definitely have done CC if we still weren't getting much sleep at six to eight months, don't know how you guys manage.

lol

sorry my computer is playing up - didnt mean to put that in again

jimjam I totaly agree, and hecules you better watch out or we will all think you cant make up your own mind hahaha

That's the beauty of mumsnet. I come on thinking one thing and leave thinking another!

I'm pretty sure when dd is a bit older it will be cc for her.

hercules, yes it does, you're doomed

I think as well these things can get rather heated because sleep/routine is such a tricky problem that we all go through at some stage. No matter how well it's turned out, like many of the major parenting issues, you always have a niggly doubt "what if I did the wrong thing?" forgetting that there isn't a "right" and "wrong" way - just different ways that work differently for different people.

I know I often feel like I need to try and justify my own choices and can feel quite defensive (because they were HELL to make at the time) - because even though it was almost 3 years ago, the heartache and stress is still fresh.

The parenting choices that were simple "no brainers" never cause quite so much heated discussion

There shoulnt be any guilt. We all have to make decisions that suit us at that time or we wouldnt have done them iyswim. I do agree also with something I think Bloss said earlier that only we know our babies so are the best judge as to what they need and what works.

Haven't got time to read all of this, but it wasn't just our grandparents who left babies at the end of the garden. I was raised by the "Truby King" method. I was left to cry either in a pram at the bottom of the garden, or shut in my room. Regularly (apparently). (& fed exactly every 4 hours, whether I needed it or not!)

Whether as a direct consequence or not, I was the most insecure child I knew. I never felt loved, or good enough. I've had years of therapy as an adult to even be able to come to terms with myself as a person & build some self-esteem. Obviously the other ways my parents dealt with me, combined with my personality, would have had some effect as well, so it won't be all down to this.

I know this isn't what you are all doing with yours & is an extreme. I just wanted to put the other side.

I used to go to DD whenever she so much as squeaked. My mother was forever telling me I was spoiling her. She is now a very confident & self assured young woman, despite having a similar personality to mine, so who knows.

Gosh Tallulah.

Was this method common?
I'm going to do a search on it.

How does your dm feel now about it?

I do agree though, noone here is talking to that extreme.

read this

I'm sorry for Gina Ford if she wanted children of her own and wasn't able to have them and I wouldn't want to shove that down her throat as a major criticism of her work in order to hurt her at all. Nonetheless, I do disagree profoundly with the idea that you get the same sort of knowledge from looking after many children/families professionally as you do from parenting your own children. I say this as someone who works with families and has had the privilege of meeting zillions of children and parents and working with them over time. Currently I'm working with families who have children with special needs and I've met lots and lots of kids with special needs of different kinds, have learned lots and lots from them and their parents, have had opportunites to talk/communicate, listen and play with the kids, listen and talk with the adults, observe what families are up against in terms of emotional upheaval, dealing with challenging behaviour, lack of sleep, lack of access to basic services, etc, see what seems to be helpful for many families and what doesn't usually work at all etc etc. I don't consider myself an expert but I do now have something approaching a solid knowledge of some of the issues that families in this situation might be facing. I can tentatively suggest ideas that might help, simply because I've been lucky enough to hear many opinions about what does and doesn't help from many people, have tried to help put things in place for lots of different families and have seen what tends to work in certain situations and what is invariably chocolate teapot territory.

However, I certainly DO NOT know what it is like to parent a child with special needs. No way. My knowledge is quite, quite different from that of a parent who looks after their child with special needs all day every day. Their experience is qualitatively different in almost every sense but most especially emotionally. Even though I love working with kids and think I'm good at it- possibly better than I am as a parent to my own boys in some ways- I don't have the same enduring emotional link and the enduring love and the enduring responsiblity of dealing with the children I work with 24/7. Even though I enjoy working with parents and do my very, very best to empathise with them, listen, suggest strategies, signpost them to the services that are out there (such as they are), I cannot truly know what their emotional and practical reality is like because my own kids don't have anywhere near such extensive extra needs. I think I forget that at my own peril, frankly. Yes, parents can and do benefit from advice from people who gain their insight in other ways than similar experience- maybe sometimes someone without intimate emotional involvement can see possible solutions more clearly and has a broader picture through their work- but I don't think it's criticising or intentionally hurtful to point out that they haven't themselves been in a situation where they need to consider taking their own advice and therefore do not have first hand knowledge of the emotional ties that bind. It's just a fact that may or may not have an impact on their advice- at the end of the day it's up to parents to decide for themselves what works for them in the context of their own insight and knowledge of their children.

Hercules, I heard a terrible story from a TV documentary. Don't read this if you can't stand awful stories. Back in the Truby King days this poor woman was following his expert advice - and at that time you didn't question the experts. Her husband was a bully and insisted they left the baby if it cried, used to lock the door of the baby's room so she couldn't go to it. Broke her heart. But, the terrible thing is, you were also supposed to leave your baby outside for fresh air in all weathers. Her husband made her leave the baby outside even when it snowed. She used to sit inside sobbing. Her poor baby caught pneumonia and died. She had other children (you also didn't leave your husband in those days, and being a bully was acceptable behaviour in a man) but, as an elderly lady when this documentary was made, this was still a very raw wound. She was still grieving, something like 70 years later. If there is any moral to this story it must be don't subdue your own judgement to that of the experts, however forceful they are.

Thats awful, I've never heard of Trudy King but that actualy made me more mad at the dad, as all daddies love their babies my dh adores our dd but (this is just my opinion so dont shout at me)I think (most) mums probably fall in love and bond with their babies instantly wheras dads love them but bond slower and women definately have a mothers instinct. When you think about most of the decisions involving your baby they are made by you and you tell your partner when they should sleep, feed etc apart from anything a lot of men are scared of small babies so that man was just a rat and wanted to control his wife because again regardless of that routine she still had her motherly instincts but was obviously afraid of her dh.

Thank you scummy- you are 100% correct. It's so nice to see people write that.

Professionals who work with a child - and forget the emotional attachment that a parent has with their child are next to useless. For example my friend's portage worker gave her a really (and I mean really) hard time for calling her dd by a nickname as it would "confuse her". a) it didn't confuse her and b) whether autistic or not she's still a daughter. What could be less natural than not being allowed to use a nickname with your dd?

Likewise people working in childcare do not have the same attachment to their charges. GF may have been carig to the babies in her care, and may have found a technique that worked well most of the time, but however kind or caring she is she doesn't feel the same way about a baby crying as its mother does.

omg eddm

Must be a sick b88star8

eddm, I saw that too and, like you, have never forgotten it. I totally agree with you, as a parent you can be aware of lots of experts' views but always follow your instinct (something it took me a while to get the confidence to do)