Commitment, or lack thereof...
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Commitment, or lack thereof...
| Tue, 01-08-2008 - 1:56pm |
So I just saw something somewhere else (won't specify where, but I bet a few of you will figure it out!) where a woman indicated that she WAS planning on breastfeeding, but now because of a heated debate about it, she doesn't want to anymore.
Ummmmm, are you kidding me?


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Why would I read a book that is based on philosophies that are the complete opposite of what I believe as a parent?
CL for Reflux
"That's the
So if someone calls another names and tells them they suck,
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Oh yes, I have definitely read the book... and the religious version (Growing Kids God's Way)... and my church did the whole GKGW program, so I got to see lots of families doing the materials. I also spent several years on an Ezzo message board, so I got to hear many first-hand stories from people following both the Babywise book and the GKGW materials.
My biggest problem with Ezzo's methods is that he makes such a big deal about "not being child-centered" that he encourages parents to go to the opposite extreme. His materials are very parent-centered. The parent is supposed to be in charge of everything, when the baby goes to bed, when they get up, when they eat, when they play. He makes it plain that moms can't trust their "instincts" (he doesn't believe they really have any)and insist that babies do not know what is good for them, so you have to MAKE them do what is "best" for them... according to his own opinions. Hence the schedule, the point being to make the baby do what you want them to do ("what is best for them") when you want them to do it (according to the schedule). It teaches parents to pay more attention to the schedule than reading their baby's cues... after all, babies don't know what they need, remember? If they are fussy the mom is supposed to look at the clock and if it's only been an hour since they ate, they know their baby couldn't possibly be hungry, the clock says they must be tired... so instead of nursing,(Ezzo says "demand feeding" makes demanding babies!)the parent is instructed to put the baby down for a nap. If they fuss, they are being "uncooperative" and should be left to cry, otherwise they will learn to manipulate the parent into getting what they want and you will have a whiny, obnoxious brat on your hands who pushes other kids off the swings at the playground. Mom is convinced that her baby is just "overtired" so she puts him to bed and he finally goes to sleep, only to wake again 45 minutes later. Ezzo calls this "the 45 minute intruder" and insists that the baby needs to learn to put himself back to sleep, since this is not nearly long enough for a nap, (babies don't know what they need) and tells moms how they are helping their baby learn "good sleep habits" by training them to sleep longer. Mom is instructed to leave baby in the crib until it is TIME to get up. According to the schedule, it is now "time" to eat, and by this time the baby is really hungry (heck, he was hungry 2 hours ago!) so mom feeds him. His enthusiastic appetite reassures her that she was right, it's time to eat and now he's hungry...and now he will get a "FULL FEEDING", where if she had given him a "snack" when he fussed a few hours earlier he would not be getting this "full feeding" and his whole schedule would have been thrown off. (He calls this "metabolic chaos"... a term he made up himself to describe this "danger" of not following his schedule.)
Do you see the pitfalls to this line of thinking? The baby's cues are ignored or simply "filtered" through the materials so that mom misinterprets hunger for "fussiness" or being "overtired". His insistence that babies "should" be sleeping through the night by 8 weeks (one of the main selling points of the book) coupled with the feeding schedule can limit feeds to the point that many women lose their milk by around 4 months. Sure, SOME women manage to do fine on this schedule, but MANY will not. But of course, the ones who have a more ample milk supply are convinced that the schedule is not the problem, after all, it worked so well for them. The same thing is true for parents of babies who naturally fall into his "eat,wake,sleep" pattern on their own and STTN early. On the Ezzo board it was very common to have first-time parents rave about how well the materials worked, only to come back a year or two later when they had a second child and talk about how the new one absolutely would not comply with the schedule. Either they figured this out fairly early on and simply dropped the materials, or they fought with their child to try to make them fit into the schedule, often with very bad results like FTT or attachment disorders.
Ezzo encourages detatched parenting... ignoring your baby's cries if they aren't at the right time, putting them in isolation to "train" them to behave, not allowing them to explore normally. (like the high-chair example someone else mentioned... high chair manners are covered in his second book) The FIRST book lays the foundation for this line of thought, you HAVE to start thinking this way in order to accept the stuff he writes in the rest of his materials. Babies are out to manipulate you, if you don't put them on a schedule they will ruin your marriage, they will become horrible brats and embarrass you in public. (Ezzo is very good at appealing to a parent's sense of pride!) On the other hand, a "Babywise" baby is compliant, quiet, goes to bed when he's told, doesn't make messes, sleeps all night, doesn't bother mom & dad when they are having their "special time" together (couch time) and in general are as convenient as a well trained poodle... to the point that Ezzo claims total strangers will notice and ask you how you came to have such well-behaved children!
I've been familiar with Ezzo's materials for over 8 years, first hand, and they are simply not good parenting advice. The "good" things in Babywise can be easily found in other materials that do not have the same negative undertones towards children.
(and just FTR, Ezzo himself is estranged from his adult children... that should give you an idea of what the long-term effects of this "parenting style" are!)
Stephanie
mom to six sensational kids!
Another risk rarely mentionned is placenta accreta, where the placenta kind of "pierces" through the uterine wall, wrapping itself around the uterus after doing so (as if fingers go through holes and then glom on on the outside). Placenta accreta is still "relatively rare" since you don't exactly hear about it every day, but it happens EXTREMELY rarely in unscarred uteri, and I believe it happens *35 times* more frequently in scarred uteri.
I do know one lady who had 4 c-sections (all unnecessary but she was given grief each time...) and the fifth who she was bound and determined to make a VBAC out of, she found out she had placenta accreta. I believe the only way to save the mother, given how *stuck* the placenta is in this case, is a hysterectomy. :-(
Uterine rupture is also much more common in scarred uteri. Cytotec (misoprostal) is extra dangerous for mothers who have previously had c-sections.
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"If you take this book alone, not grouping it together with the others, I don't think it is horrible or cringe-worthy at all.
The "good" things in Babywise can be easily found in other materials that do not have the same negative undertones towards children."
I think that needs to repeated over & over again.
Andi
I enjoyed your post!
"Ezzo encourages detatched parenting... ignoring your baby's cries if they aren't at the right time, putting them in isolation to "train" them to behave, not allowing them to explore normally. "
Just to throw this out there:
Great, I'd be interested to know the inaccurate info in WTE, since my SIL is going to soon be a FTM, and she read it!!
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