I know this is controversial. It's about 'sleep training' as it's known. My personal position on it isn't totally relevant though I'll state now that I don't believe in anything that overrides the comforting instinct in a parent, or makes a child cry in the cause of totally undisturbed nights.
There are other forms I find far less concerning - no cry sleep solution, that sort of thing.
That's my views out of the way. The issue I am having is this. MN is a site intended to provide support to parents, but where do we draw the line?
It is different, of course, but not so long ago it was considered fine to smack a child in the cause of 'good behaviour' - now it is very much more frowned upon in a social sense and also illegal to some degree, depending on how hard you want to hit them.
I don't feel that being supportive of a parent who wishes to smack their child as some sort of plan to make them behave, would be in the interests of the child or the parent concerned.
I also feel this way about people leaving children to cry, or not lifting them up when they cry, and it makes me very uncomfortable indeed to see threads about CC and even occasionally CIO where people are offering support for this sort of system.
I am NOT someone who posts about child abuse on these threads. I try and stay polite, supportive in any way I can (though not saying I think it is right) and often just hide and try and forget I read it.
It's very painful to read that sort of thing, to me - I remember crying in the night for hours, many many times and no one coming.
I hope one day that our society will move on from not listening to infants when they cry and realise that it is good for them and for us to not ignore feelings in this way, however for the time being, is there any sort of sense of right or wrong in this area, on the part of MNHQ - shouldn't we be encouraging people to respond to their babies, not to do something that makes them cry, and so on?
A lot of people seem to think they have to sleep train, that they are failing in their parenting if they don't. Sometimes they are relieved to be told that they don't have to ignore their instincts and it's alright to pick up the baby and won't 'make a rod for their back'.
What I'm trying to say is that I don't know if there is a place for support with these methods on here. I honestly feel so sick when I read another thread about a chil crying for hours and people saying 'well done' to the person fighting every mothering bone in their body not to pick them up.
To me, it's like people saying 'yay! You need to teach them not to behave like that - it's for their own good, they will forget about it by tomorrow' when a poster is documenting their physical chastisement of a small child.
That would not happen on here. I guess people see it differently, but to me, the pain in reading about it feels very very similar indeed. And I know I'm not the only one.
I hope this doesn't piss people off too much. I know how awful it is not to sleep but I feel that the adult is the one who needs to adapt, not the infant, and you're more likely to get a result that way too.
Thanks if anyone got this far.