Just to be absolutely, unequivocably clear: 1) although you, Pam, may have supported and encouraged the children in your care, the Pearls and Ezzos had an adversarial, antagonistic approach to children. 2) daycares and Montessori schools don't physically inflict pain on young children for not using the mats/rugs/blankets; and the Montessori method honors children allowing them to work at their developmental level and as their interests dictate. Nothing could be further philosophically from Montessori than the approach taken by the Pearls and Ezzos.

Drama, I know you've got all kinds of real-world adversity that would shake your confidence. You've given and given. Now stand up for yourself in your own thinking. People are allowed to have opinions, and you are allowed to ignore them and do differently. Don't carry this conversation as a constraint. Do what you need to do to make your life more manageable. You have good common sense and understanding of where this crosses a line, both in beliefs (about the nature of babies) and in practice. Go in peace, with many hugs.

Look, as sensitive as I'm am to this topic, I just don't see someone equating the two. I certainly never would assume abuse if I saw a mom or grand-mom interacting with a little one that had a pile of toys or snacks on a blanket, or if they re-directed their little back to the blanket. I'd just assume that they had a reason to provide a safe/defined spot for their child's stuff and for their child to play. (Beach blankets, picnic blankets -- all of those are a thing, and they are commercially available. Doesn't equate to abuse. )

Yes, this...not just yours. Mine really weren't interested in lovies. I have a theory that they all got plenty of touch and didn't feel the need.

Don't worry; you do you! Why would you care what other people thought? That said, if you're worried, think of some one-liners that you can trot out which include a subtle, "this is not up for discussion" cue.

One caveat to this: perhaps 10 years ago, I read that the Ezzo sh*t was becoming huge in Malaysia and the Philippines. I hate that, but by then, I had other priorities, and I trusted that closer multi-generational family structures would mitigate one of the reasons this pathology flourished in the US.

I'm just now getting back to this thread. I think this is the part that those of us who experienced this movement just can't get past. These groups/people actively, intentionally, taught that the sin nature -- manifested as normal, developmentally appropriate baby behavior -- had to be methodically trained, punished, rooted out of babies. If a baby was hungry, crying, needed food, but it wasn't time for food yet, according to the clock, the baby was trying to manipulate you as a parent, and you were to resist that evil impulse in them and train them to go longer between feedings until they could eat on a schedule. I kid you not, it was a zero sum game, either the family and home were baby-centered or baby-led (sinful) or they were centered around the marital relationship. And beware the parent who wasn't B_bywise! If a baby wanted to explore and touch things, you did not alter the environment to be baby-safe or baby-friendly -- that would be baby-centered. You taught the baby not to touch things that were not for them. That was family-centered, and Godly. It was all such a fundamentally twisted paradigm. Love is not a zero sum game; there is enough love to go around. Parents can, with intentionality, protect and nurture their relationship and still have room to lavishly love their children-- it's not either/or. Parents, in learning to give selflessly beyond what they ever imagined, in caring for a little one round the clock during those intense first months, can mature in ways that would never happen otherwise. The common root in the Ezzos, the Pearl and Gothard is a narcissistic male. (I will not ever call Michael Pearl or Gary Ezzo men; the are both lying sobs who made their women and children into second class citizens --they are not men.) I have paid zero attention to the D______r family, but others here have said that JB is a narcissist. (And each of these, except for Gothard who had odd fetishes, has a wife who abetted, enabled, and covered for him.) Finally, I believe that babies can be taught behaviors, such as the towel boundary as described by WendyRoo, that are depart a bit form typical baby behavior, without being abusive. If it helps mama have something she needs or if it keeps baby safe, all good by me. The key is the attitude toward/belief about the baby and the means of implementing it.

I don't think anyone is saying you can't teach a baby to stay on a blanket -- for safety or for convenience -- just that in the context of the D_____r family (mentioned in the OP) blanket training did mean corporal punishment to keep a child in one spot. It was also a code word or dog whistle, in that time or context, for a belief that identified another family as like-minded to your beliefs.

It was putting babies on a blanket and physically forcing them to stay on the blanket by hitting them until they "learned" not to stray off the blanket edge. The Pearls were very clear that parents were to "break a child's will", including testing them by enticing them to do something wrong, and then bringing out the switch or a thin rod (I forget the exact wording they used to describe/recommend it, maybe a hose?) as a consequence.

As I've read more of the posts here, some of you, in other contexts, use the term "blanket training" as a merely descriptive term for creating a safe or predictable custom for baby. I have no problem with that. "Blanket training" as practiced in the Pearl/Ezzo/IBLC families, a specific time and context, was a whole nuther thing! It was heavily infused with emotionally and physically abusive authoritarianism. My husband was heavily influenced for good by early IBYC concepts, but by the time I went to a conference in my college years, I had red flags prompted by the legalism and wasn't buying.

I was in the thick of that era, and was surrounded by people who were Pearl, IBLP, and Ezzo proponents. The blanket training went hand in hand with tummy time, that babies needed that in order to properly develop. I was a LLL leader and, before that, heavily involved in lay midwifery, so I was at the polar opposite of philosophical belief of the authors I mentioned, and yet, still believing in the same deity. It was an interesting time, because I would not do tummy time as a religious commitment. No, nopety, no. If we were playing and baby ended up on tummy, and was interested in what was going on from that vantage point, knock yourself out, baby! My firstborn would sit in one place and not move, and would be entertained for looong times with things that were around him. He hit all his milestones a bit early. My secondborn bellycrawled, ooching and rolling across the floor, from 4 months. She, too, hit milestones early. What frosted me most was what was done to women, both those who ended up in bad relationships, in abusive situations with their children, or worst of all, birthing alone or with hubby, because that was the "godly" thing to do, as the head took responsibility for/dominion over his family. Uggh.

My usual Saturday check-in. (It's the start of the semester in my area, and work has been a zoo. I'm putting in a lot of overtime, but it's beginning to settle down.) Melissa, you are frequently on my mind and definitely (along with your family) in my prayers. Medical red tape is so ridiculously frustrating...praying for all the puzzle pieces to come together for your care as you plan for the next step.

Yup, I remember that. It's hard, and it will really come down to what you can do to persuade them, doesn't it. I'll definitely pray for this new need.

My college roommate was, by her reckoning, a holiday one-night-stand baby, later adopted by the best family ever. Her b-day was on Sept 5th.

Such wonderful news! Congrats...I hope things work out decently with the other seller. At one point in our house-buying journey, our realtor picked up the phone to seller's realtor and talked turkey with her about allowing the seller to be a jerk, because it would cost them the sale, including the other realtor's commission. Sigh.

I typed in Chua myocarditis Hong Kong and the study came up immediately in PubMed, and the first two similar studies listed below the paper were by Buchan (Ontario); they could be clicked to from the page I linked. The one by the CDC was likely published in the MMWR rather than in a journal. I didn't look any further, but I tend to find that non-google search engines return a wider set of results.

We took the crib mattress and put it between the wall and my side of the bed, on a platform we had made out of the strong cardboard boxes that hold cases of copy paper, then a piece of thin plywood on top of that. (The paper boxes for brand name paper tend to be stronger. I remember thinking I wasn't planning to support just the baby's weight, but also mine if I leaned over and put my weight on one hand on the crib mattress, and so on.) The crib mattress was the same height as our very firm mattress, and the two were jammed tightly together, so there was no way anything was falling between the mattresses and the wall or between the mattresses themselves. There is a lot that is marketed as being super safe for babies, and families ought to use this or that product, but I tend to think that common sense and everyday items that are at hand can work just as well...they have for millennia. Our story was that nursing my first was a hard-won battle, taking about 6 weeks before babe was nursed strictly at the breast. (Subsequent babies were nursing champs, and I was a much more confident mama.) In my experience, it takes newborns and new moms awhile to learn to nurse well lying on their sides, especially since newborns need to learn to latch well. It may be a couple of weeks before a mom and baby can nurse on and off throughout the night without having mama need to get up -- at least sitting up -- and turn on a light. It's really after baby learns side-lying nursing that the magic of co-sleeping really kicks in.

Poor Dad!

These are different studies and a chart of the numbers they found in the data sets they examined. The left column of the data table lists either the lead author's name, or the entity reporting, and sometimes the authors' name + the dataset they used. To your questions, you might look up each of the studies referenced or what the public entities reported. For answers to your last question, you might look some of that up -- I don't have all the answers. 🙂 I was just providing some data on the initial question.

I think I've related this before, but several summers I worked at a uniform shop for private schools. In that role, I did customer service for families at several very pricey day schools, schools with yearly tuition in the mid 5 figures. The girls at two of the three priciest schools all, uniformly, wore sports bras, the kind in which an average teen looked like she was wearing a binder. Many of these kids also carried no cell phone, as cell phones were considered a waste of time, something bougie, but I digress. (That last bit was to underscore that they had a unique culture, with quite a bit of uniformitarian thinking or peer pressure.) We had darling plaid jumpers for one of the schools, a beautiful solid gray on gray plaid, that would go over any of several approved blouses in white or bright blue. The jumpers came to mid-thigh, were cut with princess seams so they flattered almost every body type, and they were particularly cute when paired with a shirt and skinny tie tied with a sailor knot. However, the girls hated the jumpers with a fiery passion -- they were cut for girls' or misses figures, and they just didn't hang well over a sports bra. It was kind of sad that the perfectly cute jumpers weren't feasible. It would have been a nice alternative to a pant or skirt.

I guess I need to go figure out Barbie world. (Do I have to? -- I never gave a fig for Barbie) Similarly, I missed the Halle Berry advice.

Geez. That's ridiculous!

I have my own bodily reasons for wearing a bra some of the time. However, when I am around people with whom I'm not family, it's important to me to be courteous to the public and keep my private stuff private, in keeping with the social norms when and where I live. When I was in college, I had a hirsute prof who wore cheap poplin shirts in white or pale pastel colors. It was always ick to have to see, through the fabric, things I had no interest in seeing. (He did not wear the customary men's undershirts for whatever reason.) It was unavoidable seeing him, as he was lecturing and moving, writing on a whiteboard. I was grateful on the days he came to class wearing a lab coat, and I switched to a different prof the next semester. Similarly, there have been occasions when men have worn clothing items that made the outlines of their bits visible, and I would have preferred not having seen those flashes. (You can't always look away or avoid seeing stuff.) I prefer to dress so I'm not putting other people in the same position, having to see bits they would rather not see, and I'm especially conscious not to dress in a way that would put children in that position. Bras and half-slips are a courtesy to the public.

I hope you were able to get some sleep. Desperate times call for desperate measures: how is hubby with food duty? In my experience, the lavender didn't lessen the pain level; it did speed healing. Also in my experience, steam burns are the worst of the lot. Best wishes as you heal.