Does anyone just 'parent' anymore?

[ShinyAndNew]

I've read tonnes of threads lately about helicopter parents, benignly neglectful parents, up parents, Gina Ford babies.....

Doesn't anyone just do as the behavior requires at the time?

I don't follow any 'method'. I don't really see how practical it would be. How can you make a 'method' 'fit' with your children and lifestyle?

I just parent. Sometimes sucessfully, sometimes less so. But on the whole everyone is happy, fed, bathed and clothed (even on a weekend sometimes )

SO am I missing something here? Do we now need guides to help us parent sucessfully?

I totally agree. (I am old and grumpy though).

No, but it helps if you want advice on, for example, getting your baby to sleep through the night if you can say "I really don't want to co-sleep and would prefer to establish a routine, which is best, Gina Ford or Baby Whisperer?" or "I lean towards AP and don't want to do any kind of leaving to cry" - it just gives people a frame of reference. I don't think anyone would follow something so rigidly that if it wasn't working for a particular situation they wouldn't be prepared to take a different tack.

I know what you mean.

When dd1 was young I was depressed and lacking confidence and tried GF and ended up in hospital as it made my depression so much worse, as dd1 didn't fit the routine and I was found sobbing on the floor of her room one morning (by dh coming home from work deliberately as he suspected I wasn't coping). That the routine had made me this ill was a genuine psychiatric opinion!

Since then I am very much "no method, no Guru, no teacher"

I pick and choose from whatever I want, from different ways of doing things, and just do what works for my 3 (very different) children.

We don't need guides, no not at all.

Most parents just parent. Lots of people may use methods, books etc as a guide, or to reinforce what they already do, or to give them the confidence that what they are doing is right, but on the whole very few people re actually rigid in their parenting, and very few people are actually aware of the definitions other parents put on their parenting.

I bet, for example, the helicopter parnts others refer to hae no idea their parenting is being described in this way.

But this is a pareting website, of course peopl are going to discuss it.

I don't read or own any books either.

I always remember a very professional, up and coming girl at work, who was in awe of my parenting skills. She used to say, when she had a baby, she'd put in place all the strategies I had!

Right then, that will be if at first you don't suceed, either, palm lo off on Daddy, cry or hit the bottle!

Absolutely agree.

I can never understand how anyone can be so consistent in their chosen style of parenting that they feel confident in attacking anything different.

How I parent in any situation is dictated by the circumstances, environment, my mood, ds mood etc etc.

I tend to think people who label themselves in this kind of way are a bit insecure and/or delusional.

No I don't own any books either. I did have the Lorraine kelly guide to feeding or some other such bollocks. But decided it was bollocks after it told me I should wake my baby at 6am for her milk feed in order for her to have breakfast at 7:30am. She had only just started sleeping for more than 3 hours in a row. I wasn't about to start waking her up.

Interestingly I have friends who did and do parent in a rigid book-led way. One lot in particular who were GF and came to stay with us and enforced the routine on our whole household - sulking when I would not bath my dd1 with their slightly younger ds because they thought he would be worried by her not being bathed (he was 8 mo!)

I think that was perhaps more of an early - 2000s attitude and people are more realxed now - or maybe I'm just not in touch with many people with little babies any more.

I am always suspicious of 'methods' for things that come naturally and we have been doing since prehistoric times.

Childbirth methods really get my goat - Bradley method, Sears method, usually with a little copyright symbol. Then there's co-sleeping, baby-wearing and child-lead weaning. I just followed the path of least resistance.

We do the muddle-through-each-stage method. I read widely when pregnant, so had opinions about that bit. But once they get past toddlerhood, you are on your own.

I know that I am definitely not a helicopter parent and am happy to defer to the schools.

I do find it frustrating being the mother of a particularly laid back teenager at a crucial stage, but bite my tongue (except when I don't).

It's like anything, the labels have a purpose, but when you start looking for the label instead of your instinct, you're in trouble.

I parent to instinct not method but I think those books and theories can help in some ways. If you're stuck in a rut of fatigue, shouting, poor bedtimes, trite phrases, giving in, bribery and you're truly unhappy, asking for pointers or flicking through a book can introduce a different way. You don't become that method, you just learn something new hopefully.

It's what we're all doing on here day in day out after all, inventing a parenting style. Heck, we even have our own books...

IMO, what really matters is being realistic in your expectations of what a child at a given age can be expected to understand/accomplish. Being able to try to see the world from the child's point of view works wonders. As does enough food, exercise and sleep.

Most of the problems I read about on MN seem to be due to one or both parents having unrealistic expectations - for example, expecting a 2 year old to have the comprehension and development of a 4 year old. (Assuming the child is NT).

I subscribe to the "make it up as I go along" method. Seems to work-ish.

That's a very good method TCF. Infact t'is the only one that I have been known to use

i agree completely all my books went in the bin 3 months after ds was born. i was getting depressed trying to live up to the expectations of these books. i now just feed cloth and wash him and deal with things as they come.

It is all part of the general insecurity of how to do everything "right", isn't it? And buying into the concepts that there is a Right and Wrong?

I have read a few books and just find what they suggest is all mindblowingly obvious/chimes with me or so totally out of my comfort zone that no matter how well the proposed method of parenting might work, I would not manage to do it without developing hives (I had to give GF away after reading the foreword - no way was I ever going to be showered and dressed by 7am whilst looking after a newborn ).

My "method" is Good Enough Parenting - it seems to have good days and bad days ...

My mum says they .'ve done all but they didn't have the names and the books, none f this is new.

I remeber a lovely lady who had a 6 mnth baby and was telling me how tired she was. I asked her if she could sleep when the baby naps in the afternoon and she said 'i 've got to read when he sleeps, there are tones of books that have to read and everybody in the group talks about them and i feel like an idiot'.

This industry makes millions. I am trying to find a new label -or rather to recycle an old one- and write a book. Then i will retire and i 'll sent you greetings from Barbados

Obviousely, i ll pay someone to edit it - i know that my english are bad.

There is far too much research and analysis going on these days.

As a result, we have 57 contrived varieties of parenting and just about everything else.

I have read lots of parenting books and now take bits from each one, or from each person who gives me advice rather than follow a particular one. When my DS was first born, he's now 2, I read the baby whisperer and was completely overwhelmed by it all. My MIL told me to stop reading the books as I think she could see that they were confusing me but I do feel that they helped me as I found it very hard to take advice from anyone else - probably due to my depression at the time.

I just find it funny that people seem to be so outraged that someone has taken something that people have done for millennia (ie weaning babies onto solids by giving them what you are having, sleeping with your baby, carrying them around in a sling etc etc) written it down in a book and given it a "catchphrase" - it's just the modern way of passing information down the generations, families aren't as close as they used to be. So we get to pick and choose what books/websites we read instead of only having our own families for guidance.

I bet if you look at a group of mothers who have just done what their mothers did and their grandmothers before them they don't stress half as much about which way to do things though.

Next time I'm feeling really cold I'm going to go up to the loft, take down all the parenting guides I stupidly wasted money on when pregnant with my first child and light a great big fuck off GinaFordBabyWhispererContentedLittleBabyTheTrouble With BoysAttachment ParentingHowToTalk bonfire.

They are utter crockery that make a few smart arses very rich.

Yup. I stagger through with very little clue what I'm doing . I actually wish I was more organised about it, read books and followed these tips that are guaranteed to give you an easy life and produce a genius. But the days just pass, I do what seems right at the time and hope that I do nothing that will be described to a psychiatrist in 20 years!

I love this thread. I was going to post an "Am I being unreasonable" thread about how much I am being irritated by the cult of parenting bibles.

I met someone at a playgroup who said "I favour Attachment Parenting". How? I haven't got enough time or quiet in my life to think or make a decision, let alone read and then adopt a bloody philosophy of how to cook fish fingers and get snot on my cardie.

I am particularly hating the books that use "scientific research" quoted out of context, used uncritically to support their view of how parenting should be done by others. Some books are deeply contemptuous of the methods described in other books.

If someone is so dedicated to wanting to parent well (and literate enough to read) the parenting books, its likely that they will try to do their best by their child and guess what, things will probably turn out OK. Its almost certainly nothing to do with the particular method adopted.

WTF is Attachment Parenting?

I don't parent in any particular style. DS is my first so I'm finding my feet as it is.

I nearly tore my hair out with my first dc reading all these books, each one telling me something different and claiming how damaging the other "method" was. I now had "multiple parenting disorder" - (shall I write a book now?).

So I chucked them all out and been happier since. Too much expert opinion nowadays and I really wonder what will be the end result.

I am a devout follower of Accidental Parenting:

"Shit, what did you just do? It worked- do it again!"

It basically involves keeping the child alive until you work out what the fuck you are doing.