Can we really call that "parenting"?

A friend from an old duty station sent me the link to something absolutely horrible. She sent it out to all her "crunchy granola mom friends", and frankly, I was a little proud to be considered part of that! It beats the hell out of the alternative. Anyhow, there's someone called Kitty Raymond, who's supposedly a parenting "expert" (note that I generally take "experts" with an extreme grain of salt when it comes to daily routines, sleep, and other things that are very individual from child to child). In reality, this Kitty Raymond monstrosity is simply advocating child abuse! On her very website, she advocates locking children in their rooms, not reading bedtime books, and not waking up with babies who cry in the middle of the night! She advocates doing this from 12 pounds, on!

This really disturbs me. 12 pounds and up, huh? Well, Orren hit 12 pounds when he was a little under a month old, so I guess we were really doing the wrong thing by keeping him in his bassinet next to our bed, and figuring out what his needs were when he cried, regardless of what time it was. I guess we were also idiots for following our midwife's instructions to NEVER feed on a schedule, ALWAYS on demand. (Why DO people put babies on a feeding schedule anyhow? I met a schedule feeder for the first time this past year, and I just thought it was the weirdest thing ever.) I guess my 16-month-old son, who's as big as some 3-year-olds, and can already ride a tricycle, throw a football, and make the best sidewalk chalk drawings ever, is just a spoiled brat because even today, if he wakes up in the night, we go to him. Usually, if he wakes up, it's because he's really wet, and so we change him, and he goes back to sleep. Sometimes he's teething (although we should be done with that for now), and other times he's not feeling well (if he has a cold, etc). In EVERY one of these cases, Thak or I go and get our little boy, and do whatever it is we can do for him. Whether that's change his diaper, hold him and comfort him, or give him some Tylenol (in the case of severe teething pain), we do it for him, and he loves us because of it. He trusts us. He knows we are here for him. That is the best thing a baby can know about his parents.

I'm not saying we're Attachment Parents. I've never had any desire to wear my baby, as every "awesome" sling anyone recommends me seems to feel like a straight jacket and make me completely claustrophobic, but I don't think either of my kids has been harmed by riding in a stroller when we're out and about. I tried to breastfeed them both, but it never worked out long term. Again, they seem ok in spite of it. Other than these couple things, count me as a card-carrying member of the granola society. The thought of a hospital birth makes me cringe, and I actually get offended when people assume my son is circumcised. (Thak gets twice as offended by that as I do, but considering that he's a guy, it's understandable that this issue would be near and dear to him! LOL) Pertinent to this subject, we're big on not rushing things. Both our kids have had solid food between the ages of 4 and 6 months, but never sooner. They both woke up throughout the night at least sometimes until they were about 18 months (we're not there with Orren yet, but he seems to be going the way of Erin on this), and while we did have a bit of a go at the Ferber method after a couple weeks of totally sleepless nights with a 14-month-old Orren, Thak couldn't take listening to him cry, and having to wait to go get him until a certain number of minutes had passed, and ended up rocking him until he was calm, then successfully putting him down to sleep after that. Funny enough, a few weeks later, the crying all night stopped, and he's woken up minimally since then. He does one wake-up at night for a change, maybe twice a week now. It's really nice this way.

The lesson we learned from this is actually twofold:

1) Babies do things in their own time. Orren was not ready to sleep through the night until later than other babies. We continued night feedings 5 months longer than our pediatrician said they were truly necessary just because Orren is huge for his age, and he just literally would not get full enough to sleep through the night. Think about the fact that Orren is bigger than about 94% of the babies his age that you will ever meet. You will almost never meet a baby bigger than Orren. How do you suppose he got that way? He spent the first year of his life in a near constant growth spurt, and when babies go through growth spurts, they eat a lot. It was obvious to us, so we kept on feeding him. We have been honest with ourselves and each other about what his needs were, and we made it a priority to meet those needs, no matter how inconvenient. In fact, I HATED getting up throughout the night several times for the first year of Orren's life, while all my friends with babies the same age had done some crackpot "sleep training" (also known as "You need something? Tough shit. Cry.") and were sleeping uninterrupted all night long, but when you look at how much healthier and happier Orren is than those babies, I'd take one MORE year of sleepless nights to maintain it if that's what it took. That's NOT what it takes, though, because he came to sleeping through the night (for the most part) in his own time. Can't argue with intuition... his, and ours.

2) Experts are usually full of shit when it comes to what my kid needs. OK, not necessarily 100%. In fact, there are some things I really have gotten a lot of good from reading. I read up quite a bit lately on boys, and things specific to them, since I don't know anything about little boys at all, and now have a son. It's been helpful for me to learn about little boys, and just what makes them tick. I appreciate these expert accounts, and while I still read them critically (blame my science and engineering background) I get a lot of good out of that stuff. The stuff that sucks is the stuff that basically strives to tell parents how to override their babies' natural inclinations. Any sleep training thing is garbage. Anything that mandates schedules for feeding (for babies) is garbage.


This Kitty Raymond's website is the pinnacle of garbage. Would you believe this woman advocates locking babies in their rooms for 12 hours a night, and up to 6 hours a day?? That's such crap! If you follow that, and tell somebody that you do, there's better odds of an abuse report than an ass pat! I'm dying to know how anybody thinks this stuff is a good idea.

I guess it does answer some questions for me about how so many moms these days are such total idiots, and seem to have absolutely no idea how to raise their babies. If THIS woman is considered an expert, and has come to international notoriety as such, then that totally explains where the idiots came from. I remember my jaw hit the floor when someone said they began letting their baby cry it out to sleep through the night at 7 weeks. I wondered what kind of moron would ever think something like that was a good idea, since it's such an OBVIOUS crap move. Now I know.

Kitty Raymond, purveyor of crap, empowerer of idiots, and arch-nemesis of babies everywhere. It about made me sick to read her site, but if you're morbidly curious as I was, go have a look. I guarantee you will be appalled. That is one mean woman.