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Melissa Louise

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Everything posted by Melissa Louise

  1. Well, I found it was a continuum. As children grow and develop, so does their understanding and so does the relationship. You can parent a nine-month-old differently to a three-month-old, and a three or thirteen-year-old very differently to the nine-month-old. Infants gradually develop more tolerance as they enter into and move through the second half of the first year. That's why methods like controlled crying are not recommended for infants under 6 months anymore. I think infants do experience a lot of unavoidable rejection and hurt. I think it's good to be as intentional as possible about keeping those instances as limited as possible.
  2. The 'everyone' is mostly the parent. That's understandable, honestly. None of us can perfectly parent an infant. We are always going to fall short of perfection, either because we are flawed or because we are desperate. I just don't think that 'training' is value-neutral when it comes to infants.
  3. No, it's not super controlling.
  4. 12-week-olds can't make use of knowledge like that in service of their agency. They don't 'know' the way older children can know. Their agentic behavior is wriggling. It possibly expresses discomfort, playfulness, delight, pleasure or frustration - a wide range of emotions that have nothing to do with knowledge. It's fine to sing, play, whatever as a distraction technique. Or heck, talk to them about what they are doing and may be feeling. Narrate their experience back to them. They may not understand the words but the tone and mirroring back can be deeply soothing. We don't need to train infants, just respond to their needs.
  5. The or-else is the communication of parental disapproval via the mechanism of 'no more song'. I mean, that's the whole point of doing it, right? I can totally see that some people feel the or-else is worth it. My personal feeling is that it was never worth it with an infant.
  6. Babies definitely internalize the pleasure and not-pleasure of their parents from very early. That's a fact of infant development that requires a lot of consideration, IMO. Probably a lot more than we are culturally encouraged to give.
  7. 12 weeks is pretty tiny for instituting routines and 'teachings'. This all sounds a lot like the dominant advice when I was a baby - getting a baby into a parent-led routine ASAP, teaching the baby she can't always have her way, letting her cry it out, etc. It rests on a world view, conscious or otherwise, that babies need control, and that they will be morally spoiled ('endangered') in some way if they are not taught to subordinate their needs (to explore, to move, to protest, or cry). Infancy is short. Meeting infants on their developmental level as best as one can - it's really something to aim for. 12-week-olds are still learning how secure they are in the world, through touch, tone, and satisfaction of hunger. IMO, it's really not the right time to be 'teaching' aka training.
  8. My change table solution to dangerous rolling off was to use a portable change mat on the floor. This would not be an option for some parents and caretakers with physical limitations, but for many of us, it is. Change the environment and the 'need for training' disappears.
  9. Just to add, I think when you've been neglected and/or abused as an infant and child, you are naturally going to be quite sensitive to making sure you restrain infants the absolute bare minimum. And you are going to respect the autonomy of babies as much as is humanly possible. Because you understand that even babies can experience trauma. And so you are never going to see 'blanket training' as something that really fits in well with prioritizing physical attachment. People can roll their eyes about it. That's fine. I'm a lost cause. Training babies - no. Don't do it. (Yes, sometimes we need to cause them suffering to avoid greater suffering. It's a tragedy of parenthood - let's not embrace it as an elective - for core needs only).
  10. We do have to live with some limits, even for babies. Mine were restrained for vaccinations, for example. It's horrible. I think parents do have to very carefully weigh up the cost-benefit of infant restraint. If you had other options than car travel, you may have decided to use those. Or another family may decide to minimize car travel for a time. I know families who made these choices when these choices were available. Having unavoidable times of restraint doesn't mean that blanket 'training' is a required feature of infant rearing.
  11. Yeah, sure, but blanket 'training', a practice emerging out of fundamentalist crazy-town, which is the only context this mama, who nannied extensively before kids of her own in more than one country, has ever heard of, is not a requirement for any baby regardless of their temperament. Babies can be kept safe and happy in a multitude of ways, none of which have to involve working to reinforce the (fairly unnatural for many infants) behavior of sitting away from the mother or other caretaker in a very small and defined area for a pre-determined period of time. I am very unsure of why people are so keen to defend 'blanket training'. Or the training of infants full stop. But I am starting to understand why people thought I was crazy! Signed, did not really confine to high chairs, car seats, or strollers either.
  12. I had a super early walker too. It definitely has its challenges!! I think breastfeeding was my parenting superpower. The babies would all pretty much stay contained for milk and mom snuggles ( though the toddlers got increasingly acrobatic about it!) I have a memory of reading aloud to my girls while ds breastfed upside down from the back of the sofa, but that can't be right ?! 😂
  13. Babies - under 12 months or so. They can definitely move, shuffle and crawl at some point in the first year.
  14. I don't think we get many young new moms here. Gotta say though, if any are reading along - big, big fan of changing the environment and not the baby. You can keep a crawling baby safe without blanket training.
  15. Who keeps their baby in a sling if the baby doesn't like it? No-one. Idk. Babies, guys. Tiny. Work with them. (Conceding I'm sensitized to this whole training business - training is for dogs, imo, not babies).
  16. I reckon being upfront with oneself is a good way to resolve the guilt. But also - you stopped and apologized. Plenty don't. Good for you. It isn't easy to face up to the ways we did wrong wrt our kids.
  17. What a weird thread. If you ever sat your baby/sat with your baby on a blanket, that is not blanket training. Training means you provide reinforcements (negative or positive) to shape an infant's behavior so that the behavior becomes replicable, and that it is replicable regardless of the infant's autonomous desires or needs.
  18. Well, I took out what I wanted to say, which was 'hitting', because I didn't want wildflower to feel bad. It's hitting your kid. Applying punishing force to their bodies.
  19. I'm not judging you - we all have child-rearing regrets - but I just want to make a suggestion about language (as a child who was hit through childhood) - 'popping' sounds like minimizing language to me. It's very cutesy for a term that describes a parent smacking a child. Children do break these cycles, thankfully. Despite being hit, I never hit my children. I'm sure your son appreciated the apology.
  20. OK, but that isn't training. I too sat on blankets with my babies at the park, but I wasn't blanket-training them. That's just - playing with the baby and then looking after/supervising the baby? A bit confused about why that would have a name the same as the name for people who hit their kids to make them stay.
  21. But why wouldn't you just play with the baby on the rug? Sorry, I know I sound dense, I just don't get the effort re. training. I feel like training a baby requires a level of independence that babies just don't have.
  22. Thanks. So the toys and closeness to other family members were the reward? Can I be annoying and ask another question? You don't need to answer. Why a blanket? Why not just baby plays in the room you're reading in and you close the door so she can't move out of sight?
  23. But how? I mean, I can imagine one of mine being coincidentally happy to sit on a blanket because she was a sit and watch baby, but the others? How did you train ie make it a consistent and replicable behaviour? What were the shaping mechanisms?
  24. My nanny families used playpens but we took the babies out when they got unhappy with being confined.
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