Let’s Leave the Parenting to the Parents

Well, the men in white coats have struck again. I’m certain my husband is just trying to get me all riled up and angry before I go to bed so he can have the bed to himself while I blog in the middle of the night. At about ten o’clock tonight he had me read this article from the Globe and Mail about what those righteous parenting experts are up to now, in their infinite wisdom and knowledge.

This article was basically saying that parents that let their children cry it out at night are emotionally unavailable to their children (aka ROTTEN PARENTS, aka Sucky Mommies). Don’t EVEN get me started. Okay, I’ve already started, so I better finish.

As you already know, I have a huge problem with the harbingers of guilt when it comes to parenting. So my problem with this article, and more specifically with the research behind this article, is that its sole effect will be to guilt parents into avoiding sleep training. They say the sleep training will damage the parent/child relationship. Now, I’m not a doctor, but I’m pretty sure if I were getting up three or four times a night and NEVER having a full night’s sleep EVER, my relationship with my kids would not be spectacular. Because I’d be TIRED. I’m not saying that all parents should sleep train their children, but I am saying if your child is up all night partying like a rock star and you’re pretty sure that if he keeps you up one more night you’re going to SHAKE that BABY like a RATTLE, you should probably consider sleep training. And I’m not fussy about the method. There are so many to choose from.

What it comes down to is this: babies call us in the middle of the night to nurse and that is fine, they’re hungry, so feed them. But after a while, babies get pretty happy going to sleep on the breast. And then they forget how to go to sleep without the breast. Not a big deal at 8pm, but at 1am (and 3am and 5am) when they’re waking up as part of the natural sleep cycle and need Mommy’s breast again to get back to sleep, not so great. Babies need to learn (or re-learn) their natural self-soothing techniques so that they can be good sleepers at night. Kids need their sleep! It’s not selfish of parents to help their kids be good sleepers, it’s good parenting. That being said, I also think it’s fine to get up with your kids in the night if that’s what you want to do and you can handle the night-time wake-ups and still be a good mommy during the day. At the end of the day, you have to do what is right for your family and your parenting ideals. The men in white coats work in a world of theory, not reality, and I think often this research can be really damaging and actually counter-productive to the work that many health professionals are dedicating to reducing the amount of Shaken Baby Syndrome cases.

Also, the article mentioned the detrimental effects of cortisol (stress hormone) to a baby’s developing brain. Right, so if our goal is to avoid infant stress, and if it stresses baby out to be away from Mommy, Mommy should just NEVER GO OUT. Are they just trying to drum up business for post-partum psychologists? Because Mommy is going to be off-the-wall looney tunes if she doesn’t get away from her baby every once in a while. I can’t even say that in a perfect world all babies would be raised without stress because I don’t believe that is what is best for babies. The best thing we can do for our children is to expose them to difficult situations and teach them coping strategies. If baby is crying in the crib at 4am on a full tummy, help her find her fingers and say SH SH SH and hopefully she’ll learn how to help herself get back to sleep. But, if you really want to pick her up and cuddle her, then do it. Because you’re the Mommy, and YOU know how to raise your baby. Nobody else. That’s why you got the one you got. You were meant for this job.