Balance In Parenting

I've changed this post from the original as I deeply offended people that I love & care about with the original posting.

Balance In Parenting: My Thoughts

Parenting is highly personal. One only has to peruse through the bookstore to find the multitude of books with entirely different approaches, each claiming to be the only parenting book you'll ever need. Most are written by doctors, child psychologists, or pediatricians, each having conflicting views. They range from the highly rigid to the super-flexible, structured to unstructured, the stay-at-home to the working parent. There are those that support corporal punishment, and others that find it abusive, those that support nursing, and others that explore other nutrition options.....When I had my first child, I felt that some sections from some of these books were helpful, however I felt that any one singular philosophy was not comprehensive enough to fit my family's needs or lifestyle.

I was asked to blog about a relatively new approach in America, called "Attachment Parenting" (AP). A book was recommended, one that I will not disclose because I do not want to direct others to it. I found that I disagreed with much of what the author stated, and was very offended by certain aspects of it. I felt that there was guilt injected, along the lines of..."If you don't do it this way, then you run the risk of not meeting your children's needs..." He used words like, "Gentle, loving, natural, connected, un-neglected, conscientious, night-time parenting," to pepper the pages in a manner that implied this approach supplies these things and other approaches do not. When reading this, I found that I had a highly emotional response of anger, and found it to be rather anecdotal versus scientific.

AP promotes demand feeding, co-sleeping, & is largely based on the idea that the baby needs to be near mom & dad for its emotional needs to be met. One of its philosophies is that crying is a form of expression of a need, and the baby doesn't cry for a reason other than a need going unmet.

Demand feeding means that the baby eats when hungry, not at times dictated by mom & dad. If the baby gets hungry every 2-3 hours (3-4 for an older infant), then I could see this approach working. However, nursing habits can easily go awry early on. Babies can begin to snack-feed, which means they don't eat until full, they eat until they fall asleep or become distracted. Snack-feeding is characterized by short, frequent feedings during the day and night. It interrupts both sleep & play times, both of which are imperative for development. I find several problems with snack-feeding, the first being that it doesn't transfer well to how we should eat as adults: nutritiously every couple of hours versus a bite here & a bite there. I feel that it can cause confusion - other needs can get missed in mistake of hunger. Short, frequent feedings can cause a baby to not receive the highly nutritious hind-milk which lets down in the breast after several minutes of nursing. And, a multitude of studies unrelated to AP have been conducted regarding the correlation between oral fixations later in life & eating habits as an early infant. The theory is that infants who snack-fed or were nursed to pacify whining or crying have a higher likelihood of becoming emotional eaters later on. I believe that there is at least some merit to this theory.

Shared sleeping can be a tricky one. Some children nap well with mom & dad, and also sleep well in their own bed. However, there are times when co-sleeping can be a crutch for the child, & they can have difficulty falling asleep on their own. This can continue for years, affecting both intimacy and sex between mom & dad. I feel that both bedtimes and children sleeping on their own are important for everyone's needs getting met. This doesn't mean that bassinets and cuddle time aren't appropriate, but that there's a time and place for everything and balance is a key component in any family. Children need good, deep sleep. When they get it, they are refreshed & energized. I found for my children that this approach yielded on average an uninterrupted nighttime sleep of 2-3 hours as a small infant, 4.5-5.5 hours by 2-3 months of age, and 6-7 hours by 7-8 months. They were sleeping 8-10 hours nightly well before their first birthday. It's important to recognize that each child may need different amounts of sleep, so some may be refreshed after less sleep than this. My children were both usually whiney during the day if they didn't get these amounts.

As for a child crying or whining because of a need not being met, I completely disagree. I think sometimes children cry because of this, but sometimes they cry because of a want or desire being unmet instead. I feel that the danger in assuming that its always a need can have us feeding the cry, reinforcing the behavior. I feel that children are capable of having their emotional needs met without always having to be near mom & dad, and here again there are variances between children. I do not think that a child self soothing or crying at bedtime are harsh forms of neglect, which this book implied.

As you can gather, I feel that there's a sense of balance in parenting with a structured approach. I feel that both of my children have comfort in the routine, of knowing what's expected. I do, too. Each member of the family has needs to be met, understanding how to balance everyone's needs is important. This is especially true when the child begins to have siblings, and can easily get tricky. That doesn't mean we don't apply flexibility, there are absolutely times when its required. When we're traveling, getting visits from relatives, experience growth spurts or teething, endure illness, or are having a day that requires flexibility because of circumstances, there are often deviations.

That doesn't mean that AP doesn't work for some. If you employ this philosophy and find that your home is balanced, everyone gets enough sleep, feeding is healthy, emotional needs are met, and intimacy & personal needs of others do not get neglected, then that's awesome. However, if you find that this approach yeilds less sleep at night, a cranky or whiney infant, complaints from mom or dad about how little sleep they get, or if the babe cannot be put down without him/her crying, then it's perfectly okay to make some adjustments.