crying it out

[metaphortunate]

Spend time around the hippie parenting areas of the internet, and you will run into the attachment parenting idea that leaving your baby alone to cry at all is a form of child abuse.

At first I thought this was wild-ass exaggeration. Now I think it's - these are all people with only one child, right? I mean, to even come up with this idea? Because let me tell you, when the toddler shits himself and starts to run around the house like a maniac giggling, I will be putting the baby down. And if that baby chooses to cry the entire time I am collaring his brother and wrestling him into the tub, then that is just what he will have to do, because I can't help him while I am dispensing justice and hygiene. I cannot have him strapped to my chest, not unless I want him being sharply kicked and having his poor little head shoved around by the large and active toddler making his very best effort to escape. Which incidentally wouldn't do much for the cause of not crying.

Comments

[wild_irises]

I was once on a parenting mailing list--okay, I'm a voyeur, I know that--where there were some parents who seriously believed that you should give an 8-10-year-old a choice about whether to have a broken arm set (!), telling them it would hurt a lot now but be better later. I couldn't even stay on the list...

[boxofdelights]

The Taking Children Seriously people? I was on that mailing list when my kids were very young. Rage-quit after the second time I asked a question.

[wild_irises]

Yep. Taking children seriously sounded good...

[metaphortunate]

I really hope that was all thought experiments.