Well, *that* didn't work.

[rivka]

My friend Emily canceled our Friday morning get-together today because she wasn't feeling well. I was feeling the need for some Mama companionship, so I decided to go to a parenting group at one of the local hospitals - it's for graduates of the group I attended when Alex was tiny. I'd never been to the older babies' group, because it meets at the same time as infant story hour. Emily and I always take the babies there instead.

At the eight-weeks-and-under group, I loved the leader's style. She was warm and supportive and knowledgable, and she taught a very child-centered approach that resonated with me: learn to read your baby's signals, follow the baby's cues instead of a schedule, go ahead and co-sleep if you want to, babies need to be held, you can't spoil a baby by picking her up. I looked forward to getting her advice about helping Alex sleep.

Um.

It turns out that her approach to older babies is radically different from her approach to newborns.

When I arrived, she was talking to the mother of another five-month-old about sleep. "I tried leaving him to cry..." the mother said. "How long?" "I've never lasted past twenty minutes." "Well," the leader said, "if you're only going to do it halfway then it would be better not to do it at all." She said that after the baby was in bed he shouldn't be picked up and fed for five or six hours. "Even if he cries on and off the whole time?" the mother asked. Yes, even then.

When my turn came, I started talking about Alex's sleep issues (they mostly boil down to wanting to be up for the day at 4:30 or 5am), but said that I wasn't willing to let her cry it out.

"I don't have any advice for you, then," she said. I was stunned.

"That's it? That's your only suggestion?"

"If you don't want to let her cry, you can keep responding to her every time. It's okay to do that if you think it's best for your family. The only thing I can suggest is that you try to put her down when she's drowsy instead of when she's all the way to sleep... but right now she needs you to go to sleep, and if you keep going to her she'll keep needing you."

"I was trying to sort of wean her off me gradually," I said. She shrugged.

After that, I was the Mother Who Wouldn't Cry It Out When She Needed To. I asked about a period Alex went through last week when she seemed to be in a lot of teething pain - rubbing her mouth, wanting something cold to chew on, fussing and clinging, but improving on Tylenol. We went through several days of that, but then the symptoms improved without any teeth coming in. Her interpretation: Alex was overtired because she wasn't getting enough sleep, and that's why she was fussy and clingy. Me: "But she responded to Tylenol and did better." Her, dismissively: "You can give your child Tylenol until she turns 21, then, because that's how long she'll be developing teeth."

She went on to the next mother, and the next, dispensing advice. Then someone came back to the topic of crying it out.

"Some people don't want to do it, they want to do more of a Dr. Sears Attachment Parenting thing, and that's fine if it works in their family," the leader said. "But people say 'I don't want to let the baby cry,' and I want to know, what are you going to do when she's two years old and wants ice cream for breakfast?"

I had been staying out of the whole thing and not trying to argue with her, because it's hard to explain why you don't want to cry it out in front of a roomful of mothers who are trying it without sounding like a Mommy Drive-By. I was trying to live and let live. But I was stung enough to respond to that one. "A two-year-old can understand the concept of limits," I said. "A five-month-old can't."

Another mother jumped in and told a story about how her neighbor didn't want to let her kids cry, and now they're completely undisciplined and unmanageable. "She just gave in to them, and now they manipulate her."

At that point I seriously started to feel picked on, so I left. And cried.

Here's the thing: I know I'm not a bad mother. I'm not a great mother either - I don't have the calmness and patience and unflappability I associate with great mothering - but I'm solidly average in my mothering skills. One of the things I think I'm best at is reading Alex's cues and being responsive to her. And now a second person in the course of a week (the other was my sister, in a lecturing e-mail) is telling me that I'm doing that all wrong. If I'm no good at that, then what am I good at?

I actually don't think that I'm doing the wrong thing. I'm confident that I'm making the right decision about responding to Alex when she cries. But I'm feeling awfully lonely and unsupported right now.

Comments

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Rivka, you do a very good job of mothering.

[kcobweb.livejournal.com]

You were nice, and tried not to be the one doing the Mommy Drive-By. So instead they did it to you. Really, it's not you - it's them. Motherhood is not a competition, and it's not one-size-fits-all. You do what works for you and for Alex - and those methods might not work for someone else. CIO probably wouldn't work so well for you, because you don't believe in it, and thus you'd be half-hearted and not into it.

In other words, they suck; you rule.

Again, wishing we were closer.....

[patgreene.livejournal.com]

Screw 'em.

Sorry. That was a totally unresponsive answer.

You're not an average mother, you're a good -- possibly great -- mother. Yes, we let our oldest "cry it out" but not until he was much older than five months. You do what works for *your family* and you deserve to be taken seriously. Five months is, IMO, too early to be insisting on having them "cry it out."

And WTF with that dismissive comment about Tylenol and teething? Wasn't she *listening*? Clearly not. (BTW, in my experience, my kids started showing signs of teething -- rubbing gums, irritibility around gums -- well before the teeth erupted. YMMV.)

What is *wrong* with these people?

[erisian-fields.livejournal.com]

That leader is a putz. Babies don't change from needing a response to needing "discipline" at some arbitrary age as if someone threw a switch. I have no respect for people like that leader.

Colin is my third baby. He's radically different from his much older sisters. I don't parent him the same way that worked for them because he's different. Parent by what you know your child to need, by what works for ALL of you--Alex and you and Alex's daddy. Trust yourself.

You're a good mother.

[geminigirl]

I'm not a parent yet. But you parent Alex in a way that suits her needs and personality, and the needs of you family. The woman who runs the parenting group, your sister, and all the other people who give you advice, good and bad, are not the people who have to deal with Michael and Alex 24-7. You do the best job that you possibly can as a mother, and that's what will matter in the end.

[abbylee]

"what are you going to do when she's two years old and wants ice cream for breakfast?"

The same thing as you do now: hold her when she cries. And because she's older, has more demands, and can understand limitations, you'll also tell her "no".

The problem is with parents who GIVE IN to whatever their child wants because they're crying, not with the parents who GIVE ATTENTION to their child who is crying. (That's not entirely true, there's good attention and bad attention, but you strike me as a person who understands that.)

[going-not-gone.livejournal.com]

I've been a mom for almost eleven years now. My Grand Unified Theory of Mothering boils down to this: whatever works. There is no one-size-fits-all way to do it, nobody's ever been the mother of your baby but you.

When it's your first, you want advice because you've never done it before and "OMG what if I'm doing it wrong? I could break the baby!" But the secret is: we were all raised by amateurs. From what I've read here, you're doing just fine, and that leader was a little too married to her own style of doing things, at the expense of being supportive.

Oh...I'm new here. I friended you a while back after finding you on a couple of other friends' Flists, and reading your other blog. *smiles and waves* And having been a mommy for a while, I'll support you like a big ol' 18-hour bra with underwires. :-)

[casperflea.livejournal.com]

I think you did the right thing by leaving. It's worse than discussing politics, discussing parenting choices with most people. If you don't already agree, it's really rare to get to agreement, or even mutual respect, through conversation. But we support you! In email, if necessary.

I have found transitional ages the hardest - when the child is old enough that it seems she should be moving to a more mature x [in our case, it's almost always "sleep pattern"] but isn't going there by herself, and how do you gently nudge her in the direction you want?

If you don't already own 3 copies (and even if you do), I recommend Elizabeth Pantley's No Cry Sleep Solution. It is creative and varied and respects a lot of choices (breastfeeding/not, co-sleeping/not).

[erbie.livejournal.com]

You keep listening to your heart when it tells you what your baby needs. kcobweb is right when she says that you didn't want to do a drive by so they did it to you.

Being responsive to your infant is, IMO, the best thing you can do for her. You were right when you said a five month old can't understand limits. All she knows is she's hungry/tired/wants to be held. At that age, needs and wants are the same thing.

Here's a story. I held my (now) 4 year old daughter ALL the time when she was a baby. She slept with me, I nursed her on cue, I responded to her needs and wants. If she cried, I assumed there was a reason and I tried to figure out what it was and what I could do to fix it. I never let her cry it out. She is now a happy, goofy, extremely bright, independent!, confident, delightful 4 year old. Sometimes she wants ice cream for breakfast. Sometimes I give it to her, but not because she cries for it, but because I trust her to make her own food decisions and to get what she needs nutritionally, and she does. (And her favorite food is spinach!) This is not to say she has no limits, because that is far from the case, now that she is old enough to understand them.

So all the people who told me that responding to her when she was a baby would somehow spoil her or make her clingy or dependent were just. plain. wrong. She's the opposite of what they said she'd be, and I am SO glad I trusted myself as a mother to do what I knew was the right thing for her and my family, despite all the crap that came my way for it. All the "oh, aren't you cute, you new mother, who doens't know a thing, and I'm so much more experienced than you" patronizing, demoralizing drive-by crap.

So you trust yourself and your baby. And don't go back to that group because they will just continue to make you doubt yourself.

[saoba.livejournal.com]

Learning to read and respond usefully to your child is good mothering.

What works with one child may not work with another. That's because babies are *gasp* individuals, not cookie cutter little blank slates.

Sure, crying it out may work, with some babies and some mothers. But just because it worked for Bubba doesn't mean it will work four years later with Sissy. Heck just because it worked at six months with Bubba doesn't mean it will still work when he's nine months old.

Which is the long way of saying that the leader is a prat. She has one trick in her bag to offer to parents? Sheesh.

[journeywoman.livejournal.com]

I do see what the group leader meant about not doing things by halves. Some nights we let the boy CIO, other nights we don't, depending on level of exhaustion and volume of crying, and I think that it confuses him when the same actions lead to different results.

OTOH, she was completely unsupportive of you and your parenting decisions, and created a hostile environment. Being a parent is difficult enough without having to defend your every action--which you take because you believe it's best for your child--to some stranger. Screw her and the horse she rode in on.

As others have said, YOU are the one who knows what's best for Alex. If it doesn't feel right, it's because it isn't.

I very much like what a PP said about giving attention being different from giving in. I will have to remember that.

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

This woman disagrees with you. That's fine. But why on *earth* would she think it would be helpful to tell you--in front of a group of people--that she thinks you're doing the wrong thing? Even if she thinks that, how could she think that was the right thing to do to someone who's come to her looking for support and sympathy? If you'd been looking for debates on parenting styles, you could have stayed home and gone online.

-J

My thoughts

[tendyl.livejournal.com]

I think you're doing just fine. In fact, I've been reading what you're writing and taking notes for when my little one gets here in January. Why? Because I think you've got your head on straight. Babies don't get limits, why should they? I figure on following their cues, which is what my midwife suggested when we talked about breastfeeding the last time, because they know what they need and don't have the ability to express it well yet. I figure on setting limits when they get old enough to understand them. Anyway, I want to growl at this teacher for you. May I?

[richtermom.livejournal.com]

Wow. I just want to backhand that group leader. WTF? Suddenly at eight weeks kids demand detachment and discipline? What's up with that? Cripes.

You're fine. Squeaky still doesn't sleep through the night reliably and she's 19 months, but that's how she is -- she's sensitive to dairy, she doesn't let me know her teeth hurt until the middle of the night, etc. And often she does get up around 3:30-4 a.m. and we go sleep on the couch together for another hour or so before I have to make DH's lunch.

When Squeaky was around 8 months, we finally segued her into "falling asleep on her own" not because she was 8 months or because we wanted to "teach her independence" or something but because she started to startle awake whenever I put her into her crib when she was asleep. So around 8-9 months, I put her in her crib, stayed with her, rubbed her tummy, petted her hair, sang, talked, etc., for up to three hours the first night, and within the week, she was a lot less stressed because she knew she was in her bed. I have no idea if I could have done that earlier, but I don't think I wanted to try either.

You responded logically to her rhetorical question about ice cream for breakfast, and in return she, in return, encouraged an environment of judgemental snarkiness despite her language about "what works in other families." It's a nasty situation.

Alex is adorable, and you rock, and I know a lot of us here want to be your cheerleaders, but if you need someone in-person, I hope you can find one because you shouldn't go back to that bitch.

[txanne.livejournal.com]

That woman's an idiot. Children cry and grownups try to make them feel better. Five months is way too soon to start letting them cry it out. (She says, in the world's first drive-by aunting.)

[neonnurse.livejournal.com]

I don't suppose this woman says that if you change your baby's diaper every time it's soiled, you are training her to need you and you will still be doing it when she's 21?

It makes as much sense to compare the needs of a 5 month old and a two year old.

Learning to be the expert on YOUR baby is exactly the right approach. It's good to seek out different ideas, of course, but in the end, YOU are the expert on YOUR baby. YOU decide what to do, what to experiment with, and what to dismiss out of hand.

You are doing fine. Keep believing that.

[patgreene.livejournal.com]

Oh, and in retrospect, I don't think CIO was the best solution in that case either. We did things a bit differently with the other two, and had an easier time all round.

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

what a big dope that woman is.

is alex an ax murderer? noooo. so you're doing a pretty good job so far.

*hug*

OTW CIO

[ailbhe]

If it was me, I'd have cried in front of them all. How appalling that someone purporting to offer support and advice is so... unsupportive and uninformed! And cruel!

Rivka, you're a fantastic mother. You've had to make some really hard decisions (I'm thinking of one in particular) and you always choose carefully the best option for your baby and your family.

We are buying Linnea a bed to make it easier to nurse her to sleep. I can't lie down in her cot/crib. I'm not willing to CIO. I'm too tired to understand NCSS. So I'm going to do what works until we're getting *some* sleep and then I'm going to read it and try it, because really, it comes from the right attitude.

My mother tried crying it out on me for one night, when I was about Linnea's age or a little older. I climbed out of the cot and onto a pile of books and opened the door. They took away the books. I climbed on a pile of pillows. They took away the pillows. I climbed on the teddies. I climbed on the wadded-up duvet from the bed.

She learned that it doesn't work for some people without actual brutality. So she gave up.

I wasn't allowed ice-cream for breakfast though. And somehow I don't want it now.

[chargirlgenius.livejournal.com]

Good lord.

Well, you're not alone, and you're not unsupported! I hate that feeling, when you're just so shocked by what they're telling you, that you can't come up with a response fast enough to put them in their place...

You're doing the right thing, because what you're doing is motivated by love and caring, not by being at the end of your rope. You're still in control - the parents who end up "giving in" are the ones who do it because they just don't know what else to do, and they're too tired and worn down by their child to do what they know is best. They're the ones who will give a cookie to their 3 year old to quiet them when it's not *convenient* to ride out the tantrum. You're going to her because she has needs, not because she's "manipulating" you.

Have you ever read the "Babywise" books? I'm not recommending them - they're awful. They're about scheduling and CIO, and they really left me confused and self-doubting. After a few days of me and Henry being more upset, I just let go of the ideas, realized that I just need to trust myself, and was instantly happier. I have "not-Dr." Ezzo to thank for that.

[ewein2412]

the dude who came up with the whole "crying it out" theory (whose name escapes me) pointed out in a New Yorker article a couple of years ago that it DOESN'T WORK FOR EVERYBODY. It's not a RULE.

Do what's best for ALL of you.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

So all the people who told me that responding to her when she was a baby would somehow spoil her or make her clingy or dependent were just. plain. wrong.

Several people told me, when Alex was tiny and spending about 23 hours a day in physical contact with one of her parents, that I was creating a baby who would never, ever be able to tolerate being put down. I was supposed to "teach" her to be on her own by leaving her in a crib for a while every day.

Guess what? When she hit 3 1/2 months old, she started to want to spend big stretches of time on the floor wiggling around, playing with her toys. She can entertain herself for long stretches of time with just occasional input from me. She grew out of wanting to be held 24/7, just by her own maturational processes.

Re: OTW CIO

[richtermom.livejournal.com]

Here's my Bad Mommy Story that I hope I never surpass.

The DOCTOR told us we should try CIO with our daughter when she was about 6 months old. I really didn't want to, but DH was with us at the appointment and he was all for it. [Frankly, he and I don't agree on a lot.] So I nursed her to dozing off, put her in her crib and said good night, and let her cry. So that was a good hour long. The next night? 50 minutes. The night after that? Over an hour. I think there was one or two nights sprinkled in around there where we arrived home, she was exhausted and asleep, and she stayed asleep when we put her in the crib, but basically, no, she didn't want to go to sleep in her crib, and CIO was HORRID. So the last night we tried it, she cried for like an hour and a half, and I went in because after doing this night after night and crying myself, I couldn't take it anymore.

Turns out she had figured out how to stand up, and she didn't know how to sit back down.

Never again. Never ever ever.

[tammylc.livejournal.com]

Ugh - how horribly awful. From where I sit, you're doing a great job of mothering Alex thoughtfully and with compassion, and that's what I think is most important - that you're actually thinking about what you're doing, and not just following some sort of baby script or party line. Keep up the good work!

Re. teething pain that resolves without teeth - teething pain can and does start long before the teeth reach the surface - they have to push their way through a lot of tissue to get up there. Depending on proximity to nerves, etc, the process will be more painful at certain layers of tissue than at others. I've even heard it suggested that some gentle pressure and massage on the gum area during hard teething times can help get past the particular layer that's causing the pain.

[samtosha.livejournal.com]

You are doing a great job. I never let my Alex cry it out either. He was not a particularly fussy baby but he would have his moments. My son will be 15 years old in a few months and I can assure you he is a very well disciplined, well adjusted and manageable child. Your mother intution talks to you for a reason, and while many times it might go against conventional wisdom, you are Alex's mother and you know her best. I think you are doing a great job of mothering. Hang in there.