All I could do was roll my eyes...

Today I found a news article (thanks to Vickie for sharing the link on Facebook) and I can't remember when last I laughed this much. It is one of those "this is how you should raise your baby" kind of article which clearly wasn't written by somebody with actual experiences of having her own child, or maybe it is somebody who is into Scientology or something. Some of what she mentioned sounded vaguely familiar when I read about Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes about raising their daughter the Scientology way. But anyway...

This expert, Polly Elam (I Googled her and found a PDF document listing all her qualifications and work experience, but not a single mention of whether she has kids or actually tried out the advice she is giving and charging lots of money for) recons that "from day one a parent should consult their baby before picking them up, changing their nappy or taking them on outings. That means talking the baby through what you are about to do, before you do it and waiting for their response".

So I guess Baby wakes up screaming and you then sit there and say "Is it okay if I pick you up to check if perhaps your nappy is wet or dirty, would it be okay with you? I'm going to stick my hands into your cot, slide it underneath your head and your back, then I'm going to lift you up, put you on the bed, take off your baby grow, undo the nappy, take a wet wipe, wipe your bottom, put a clean nappy on, put your babygrow back on and lift you back up. Scream!!!! Okay, okay, I hear you are screaming, but can I have your response to whether it is okay for me to do what I just said? You didn't hear me because you were screaming as I explained??? Okay so this is what I want to do..." Right... Problem number 1: from day 1 babies are typically incredibly impatient. They don't like waiting. I remember when Bianca woke up being hungry, I would barely have enough time to run to the kitchen, heat up her bottle, put in the milk powder, shake it all up and stick it in her mouth. If I wasn't quick enough she would scream to the extend where I was worried the neighbours would come knocking on the door and if I wasn't fast enough I'd have to try and calm her down first before she would drink properly. Yeah, not much time for talking her through the process, asking her permission and waiting for her response. I did learn some time-saving strategies, but can honestly not say that she would have given me sufficent time to actually hold a whole discussion around the process.

And then Polly goes on to say that if parents skip the consultation they should then later apologise to the baby and explain why they acted hastily. Polly recons that this strategy leads to confident, happy children with high self-esteem who can solve problems. Well Polly, there is nothing wrong with my girls. Both of them are happy, confident, they have a high self-esteem, they can solve problems and in fact we encourage them ways of learning to solve problems, and what's more they have great manners and show respect to others too, but that wasn't because I followed your phillosophy...

"At other times, babies and toddlers should be allowed to explore at home, rather than being restrained in high chairs..." Right, I wonder if Polly has ever had to run after a 1 year old trying to get supper into them. When Bianca was around that age we haven't yet bought a high chair, and I can't tell you how often I actually had to run after her trying to spoon food into her mouth. She simply didn't like sitting still. Surely in my opinion if you put them into a high chair when they eat supper with the family, surely that also teaches them that we show respect for others too. That as a family we eat together and we wait for everybody to finish eating before running around again. And surely this way they can't just topple off a big chair and fall off or choke on food that they had in their mouth as they ran around. Sure I'm all for exploring in the house, but as a parent you also have to teach your child to show respect to others as well.

Elam says: "We try not to praise the child for things that they would do naturally ... a little bit of struggle is what a child enjoys doing. When they have accomplished something, we want them to have the intrinsic feeling of, `I did it!', rather than looking for the external praise." Really? So the fact that Caitlyn is busy learning to toilet train I should just ignore it each time she actually did it in the toilet instead of in her undies? Really? I'm sorry, but I disagree with that. I think it is important to share in Caitlyn's excitement. I think it is important to recognise that what she is doing is great and amazing even if something like that might not be particularly exciting to Polly.

I can't help wondering if Polly actually have or had her own children and I wonder if she actually tried out her own phillosophies or is this merely just somebody trying to sound all fancy and making money off parents? I vote on the latter...