must-read article for everyone who visits this forum - Page 2

[nitareality]

Originally Posted by awnja

and its a wacked practice... but the damage tends to get exagerated. It doesn't destroy a child. There are worse things. For example, if parents were to divorce over cosleeping, that would affect a childhood more than CIO, in my opinion.


Julie

I guess it depends on your definition of "destroy". How much experience do you have with attachment disordered children? It's not something that always happens when people use CIO, no, but it's just one of those things you don't want to risk. It's close enough to "destroyed" to discourage me.

[Mommy Piadosa]

Thanks

[Kira's mom]

Co sleeping works. My parents co slept with me 44 years ago and have had such a fantastic relationship with them! (DF passed away the morning dd was born)My mother and I are so close. I trust her implicitly.I honestly feel that a major reason that I am the person that I am today is because of the way I was parented (mostly by mom-but those were the times...).That's enough of a statistic for me!

[earthmama369]

Originally Posted by musemama

Hi! My daughter Fenix is almost 6 months old, she's breastfeeding and wakes up a few times each night to feed. So often I catch myself wondering if I'm doing something wrong, why isn't she sleeping through the night? So much data out there is based on formula feeding, and so many other parents, doctors and society in general put out expectations for sleeping straight through.

I'm new to this forum, but it's refreshing to see the other side supported here.

I have yet to read the article in question, but I also agree with Kay that without good support, a strongly opinionated article doesn't do much to convince me what's best as a parent. Sometimes I react emotionally, but upon consideration, I need proof.

(By the way Kay, my dd is named Fenix - the middle English spelling)

My daughter is 8 months old, breastfeeding, cosleeping, and she is still going through periods of frequent waking/nursing in the night. Some of it is related to teething. Some to growth spurts and having a busy brain when she's figured out something new. But the most important thing my doctor ever told me regarding the myth of sleeping through the night is that the medical definition of sleeping through the night is only 4 hours. If she sleeps 4 hours straight somewhere in there, by definition she's sleeping through the night.



~Sarah
Mama to Qualia, 8 months

[juliepersons]

Co-sleeping

I know! And do we know how these kids are affected in the long run? There are subtle differences that mean a great deal when you are a grown person and cannot sleep well or don't feel good about yourself. We never know the long term effects; the best we can do is love our children and listen to them to tell us what they need.
Snuggle up! Julie (co-sleeping for nearly 6 years and counting ) mommy to : and

[mandib50]

I'm sure it was awful for mom, dad and baby and its a wacked practice... but the damage tends to get exagerated. It doesn't destroy a child. There are worse things. For example, if parents were to divorce over cosleeping, that would affect a childhood more than CIO, in my opinion.

i don't think we can tell if the damage is exagerrated or not. i personally think that ignoring a baby's cries is abuse. the baby has a need that the parent is not responding too. of course, we have no real way of demonstrating the exact amount of damage caused by CIO. some babies are very sensitive and letting them CIO can have the potential to be very damaging.

mandi

[MamaEllie]

Great Article

[Christeeny]

Originally Posted by mollyeilis

Just looked it up, and I've been staying up late enough to watch Saturday Night Live since the day before I turned 6. Yep, since its premiere.

(for those of you who might be aghast, an innocent kid doesn't even get that the jokes are dirty sometimes unless adults are acting like they're dirty. i had a whole different understanding of many SNL sketches than their reality...once I started watching re-runs as an adult I could still remember what I thought they were about, and I was shocked that the sketches were so naughty!)

LOL I KWYM. I've watched things like that as a kid, and the jokes totally went over my head. Nowadays, I can't believe I was so naive!

[Christeeny]

Those are some great quotes. I can't read the full articles right now. I have my Toddler coming in and pulling on me every few min. LOL

[Lizseas]

Check out this article...

http://www.nd.edu/~jmckenn1/lab/culturalarticle.html

Hi All:
I am just jumping right in... I am an RN, LLLL and IBCLC and Mama to 2 homebirthed, cosleeping, extended BF babes. This is an article by noted US sleep researcher James McKenna, looking at how culture effects the way we (sleep and) parent. I often refer Moms to this site for another look at sleep, and how there are fewer "sleep problems" out there than we think... If only we could just listen to our babes and our Mama instincts without criticism!
Liz

[shanagirl]

Molly your post made me laugh but also set off a lightbulb-- I could totally relate to you --watching late late night TV very young, last one to sleep as slumber parties (I remember people begging me to shut up and finally just ignoring me). But here's something else I remember-- before all that. I was the youngest in my family, and I had to go upstairs to bed alone while my older sibs got to stay downstairs and watch the Tonight Show. I HATED being upstairs alone. I could not fall asleep feeling so alone and far away from everyone. I would lay there and yell out their names every minute until someone came upstairs, or I would sneak to the bottom of the stairs and wait until they were coming up. I remember the main feeling I had was that no one cared about me.

It just hit me, how different is this from a baby left alone and crying in a crib? Ok, so I was 6 or 7 but I am sure there is some primal instinct in resisting being left alone in the dark, and feeling vulnerable to your core.

Hm.

[KangaTwo]

Originally Posted by manda

Great article!

I also found reading the book Our Babies, Ourselves helped give me more realistic expectations about sleeping. Other cultures seem to handle it so much more level-headedly than Americans do.

I thought that was a great book. Not at all what I expected it to be about, but it was definitely worth my time to read.

[Wolfcat]

I just want to point out that these articles are MOSTLY written for journals. That means that the writers (usually PhDs) are writing to collegues, or people who have reason to put out theories to others with a similar knowledge base. In other words, the data is more in the lingo or jargon. These would be written to encourage or ask approval for studies, not always site them. Additionally, the studies that are available may not have been very good, so siting them would have been detrimental.

Of course with subjects like non-behavioral psychology and anthropological psychology, there are so many professionals who dismiss the theories as non-ligitimate because of the genre, so to speak, they have to prove the ligitimacy of the theory itself before they can work on proving the theory. Also, some of those publications won't publish or support actual studies until a large enough internal group is convinced that the theory is valid.

That's just based on what I know of journal workings.

[mom2natty]

And do we know how these kids are affected in the long run? There are subtle differences that mean a great deal when you are a grown person and cannot sleep well or don't feel good about yourself. We never know the long term effects

In his book Good Nights, Dr.Jay Gordan, who is a huge proponent of co-sleeping and responding to children's night time needs, says that he rarely sees or hears about many of the "mainstream" problems American teenagers have from his clients. Most families who see him are co-sleeping families and when their kids grow to be teenagers, they are so close to their parents (for a lot of reasons but nighttime trust he says, is really important) that they are not rebelling as extremely as many tennagers. So my longwinded point is that, sure many kids who CIO will be fine, contributing, members of society. I have many friends who CriedIO and didn't breastfeed long as babies, if at all, and they are lovely people, but they are nowhere near as close to their parents as I am (a former co-sleeper and I nursed until i was 4). I was a mild teenager in comparison too. I was very honest with my parents and wanted them to be happy and proud and so I never did anything too crazy (just normal, mild risk taking). Where as my buddies' teenage stories make me shudder!!! Americans think it is normal to cry it out, but we also think it is normal for teenagers to HATE their parents (sure I thought mine were annoying from time to time but never HATED them) and to run away from home , get drunk, be sexually active so young and act out in big ways. Is there a connection? I think so.

[Lillianna]

Hi! I'm just jumping in here, but have a few questions. when do the children go to bed? Do the adults always have to lie down with the child in order for them to go to bed?

[RBinTEX]

Hi Lillianna. I'm just jumping in here too. In my house, my baby usually goes to bed when I do, unless she's really sleepy. In that case, she'll nurse herself to sleep in my lap in the living room, and I'll lay her down in our bed and join her later. Naps work that way too. I know it's nap time when she gets whiny and pulls up in my lap and tosses her head back to nurse. That means I need to pull out my book and read for 15 or 20 minutes until she's good and asleep, then I lay her in the bed.

On the good parent/bad parent, cio/cosleep debate: It's funny, I've been thinking a bit about this topic lately! I have three older children, and one little one. When my older ones were little, I found other moms with my same mindset through LLL, etc. When the kids got older, I made new friends closer to home with the moms that were active in the same parent involvement programs at the schools, etc. I have some close friendships with these moms now, and we've watched our kids grow up together. They are great moms with great kids, and I'm glad my kids have grown up with theirs. When you have left the breastfeeding and cosleeping years (and they do go by quickly, believe it or not) you tend to forget about those days. It never occured to me to wonder what my new friends did when their kids were little. Now that my friends see me breastfeeding and sleeping with a toddler, they are astonished! They ask a lot of questions. I was astonished at first to discover that these great moms with great kids bottle fed and put their babies in cribs to cio! But, parenting is a complex equation. I would never and will never give up extended nursing and cosleeping. But I do see good moms who didn't do either.

To be perfectly honest, my house is different than their houses in some ways. They are always complaining about siblings battling each other, and that just doesn't happen here. (Tandem nursing, maybe?) On the flip side, their kids seem to be a little more mature and a little less dependent on mom as they enter the teen years. But, I've never been in a rush for my kids to grow up too quickly. I guess it depends on what you're after.

Bottom line, there's more than one way to skin a cat. Of course, I think my way is the best way, otherwise, I would have done it differently. But, I'm not going to knock my friends for doing what they did. I know these ladies, and they want the best for their kids too.