Now that this story has caught national attention, I thought I would revisit a topic that is usually very offensive and explosive.  However, I think I’ve figured out a way to explain my views in a more accurate way than I did before.

I don’t NOT believe in spanking your kids.  I just think a lot of times it’s overdone.  The guy in the story above?  OVER.  DONE.  If you’re leaving bruises, there’s something wrong.

We could try to go down the list and be legalistic and always make sure that we’re in the rules and not out of the rules when it comes to spanking, but I know that when Ari gets old enough to start getting spanked in a few years, I’m probably not going to be wanting to check things off my list as I discipline my child.  And because “it works” is not an excuse (a lot of things “work” I would rightfully be arrested for doing to my child), we’ve got to figure out some way to make sure that what we’re doing is effective AND biblical – that it brings about the change we desire and is also Christ-like.  As I was discussing this on another blog, I realized the answer to my question – how to judge from our hearts if what we are doing is Biblical without being legalistic about rules.  I have felt this before but have always tried to make “sense” in the form of rules out of it. I have just recently realized where all these rules were coming from, so for all you interested, here it is.  Perhaps this will make more sense and explain a bit of what I have meant before when talking about spanking.

Satan is a bringer of condemnation.  If the method you use to discipline your child brings embarrassment, fear, shame, hate, anger, vengeance, false obedience, humiliation, or condemnation, then it is probably not of Christ.  Christ is a bringer of conviction.  If the method you use to discipline your child brings love, compassion, understanding, redirection, true obedience, repentance, redemption, humility, and conviction, then you are probably doing things Christ-like.

I think if we watch our children and use this as our guide – are we condemning our children or convicting them?  Are we embarrasing them or lifting them up?  Are we making them angry to turn them away from us or understanding to turn them toward us? – then we will be on a better path toward understanding exactly what the scriptures mean when they refer to spanking, discipline, teaching, and training.

And it’s not a loose link, either.

http://pressoffice.cornell.edu/oct06/tv_autism.shtml
http://www.whitedot.org/issue/iss_story.asp?slug=ADHD%20Toddlers

Not only may early television watching trigger autism (a possible link), it’s been shown that for every 10 minutes a day of TV a child watches before they hit 2 years of age, they have a 10% more likely chance of having ADD when they are older. This includes “infant” television such as Baby Einstein. (Which, by the way, is a JOKE. We studied this in child psych – it’s far more harmful than helpful. I can’t believe they haven’t been sued yet.)

So if a 10 month old watches 30 minutes of TV a day, they are 30% more likely to have ADD. That is a HUGE statistic. And by the time they are six, their TV habits are ingrained – will they be a couch potato? How much they watch TV in the first 2 years will determine that.

Now I should say that Ari watches TV. She’ll get an average of about 10 minutes a day of Baby Signing Time or the Signing Baby Einstein DVDs. But – apparently – the key to letting a kid watch TV is to (a) let them say no! I know a lot of parents whose kids aren’t interested but basically beg the kid and plop them in a chair and make them watch. (B), be there with the kid. TV should never be used as a babysitter, even for 10 minutes, because the AAP’s study directly links this with decreased ability to focus (and they will never learn anything, anyway). A child needs interaction to learn – it is IMPOSSIBLE for a child under 2 to learn anything from TV – IMPOSSIBLE. Their brains cannot process the 2D image. (C), the show should move slowly. One of the problems is kids watch TV that moves fast and they think that this is how fast real life moves and get bored with real life.

So much controversy! What kind of TV and how much do your kids watch?

I have been trying to write this blog for a while, at the request of a friend. I just keep…not liking it. I can tell I’m coming across not as I mean to. So in order to get my point across easily, I’m cutting it down significantly. I’m just going to make a few key points and raise a few key questions and not go into a lot of detail.

I do not agree with the cry it out method of sleep training, as anyone who knows me probably knows. It has been clinically shown that children raised on cry it out are less trusting of their parents as teenagers. Really, that only makes sense. An infant can’t talk to you, or make any sort of meaningful communication besides crying. Crying is not manipulative to an infant. It’s not a game or a contest. You aren’t “letting your child win” when you go to pick them up. This isn’t a competition between you and your child, it’s a cooperation. There is no winner and loser. An infant is not crying to get on your nerves, or to be disobedient. An infant cries because she’s trying to tell you something. And when you ignore them, they learn that they don’t get listened to. A child who repeatedly tries to communicate and is ignored will eventually stop trying to communicate. I know I don’t rest well after crying myself to sleep.

When Ari was a few weeks old she was sleeping in the bed next to me and starting crying. I tried to comfort her, feed her. I couldn’t get her to stop. This was unusual, but I tried everything. She wasn’t crying like she was in pain. I finally realized, when I turned the nightlight on, that she has gotten her leg stuck inside her pajamas and couldn’t move. I’m so glad I didn’t let her cry it out! My poor child was not being disobedient or manipulative or “bad.” She was saying, “Mom! This really hurts, can you fix it please?” If I had ignored her, I would have taught her a valuable lesson – Mom doesn’t listen.

Infants learn. Even fetuses learn. A psychologist can recognize a cry it out infant by the time the child is 1 year old.

Cry it out babies, on top of being less trustful, more fearful and more clingy, also cry more. When a child is allowed to sit and cry, they are being taught not how to soothe themselves, but how to cry. They are perfecting the art of crying, and crying is becoming their comfort. (A quick note: letting a child cry it out is an entirely different thing from a child who cries no matter when you do, like colic.)

So there’s why I don’t like cry it out, in a nutshell. Now some food for thought:

Why do we make our kids grow up so fast? When your kid is 18 they simply aren’t going to be coming to you to be rocked to sleep. They aren’t going to need to nurse to comfort themselves. You will miss those times. It is only a few short months or years when your infant needs you this desperately, when they are learning to trust you and that the world is basically a good place. Formative doesn’t begin to describe the impact of these years on your child, and yet we want to throw them away? Why? Why do we rush things in this country?

At the end of a long day, when we’ve had fun and laughed and been fussy and met new people and all of life’s “stuff,” I know that I can sit in our glider in Ari’s bedroom and rock her to sleep. I can watch that magical bundle of joy nurse herself contented and slowly become limp with exhaustion in my arms. How long will I get to do this? How long will she be so tiny that I can hold her in my lap, watch her eyes close in perfect contentment and trust, lean down and kiss her tiny forehead before I set her in her bed? How long? A year? Two years? I have a whole lifetime ahead of me to enjoy sleeping through the night. I just really don’t feel like rushing this short time that I’ve been given.

I came across this interview on one of the blogs I follow.  It really gives some food for thought about positive discipline and such.  I’m a bit skeptical and at the same time encouraged.  I have personally seen how much better positive discipline (i.e., proactive, empowering, preventative) works than punitive (i.e., reactive, punishment), but only in a day care setting.  (“What do we do when we finish our meal?” empowers kids to remember to put their napkins in the trash, whereas “Okay, it’s time to put our napkins away,” usually makes them resentful and sometimes angry.)  Has anyone tried this with their kids?  Read the interview and tell me what you think.

I’m writing this blog because I love you. I love you and your kids and want them to be smart. And because I might win a million dollars. But mostly because I love you and your kids. And mostly because of the million dollars. Which is actually a set of DVDs. Worth a million dollars. Or $160. Whatever.

I’ve been torn for a while, between letting Ari watch educational television and all the experts saying that if my kid stares at a TV for more than five seconds before she’s two then by the time she’s 20 her brain will have imploded. Or she’ll eat hairbrushes. Oh wait she already does that.

So I’ve made a decision. Looking at a TV can’t be any more harmful than eating dog fluff off the floor. (Have I mentioned our vacuum sucks? Or doesn’t…wait…which would be worse?) It can’t be too bad, especially if I’m interacting with her (one of the concerns with TV) and she’s not watching it too much so her eyes will be focusing more on 3D objects than a screen (the other major concern). I’ve chosen, as my debut educational TV for me and Ari to watch together, Signing Time, a flippin’ awesome set of videos I was introduced to my friend R. Right now our budget won’t allow us to actually PURCHASE the set (we hope to be remedying that soon) so we are stuck to watching the 1 minute previews on YouTube and looping them.

If you have kids, I would recommend doing the research for yourself about TV but if you do decide to give it a go I would highly recommend Baby Signing Time for infants. Don’t do it too often a day and I would definitely watch the DVD with your kid (so you can learn the signs and interact, they will learn faster and more efficiently that way anyway), but I hope it will help Ari learn signs faster if she’s seeing the object on the TV and watching BABIES do the sign (instead of boring old mom. See? I’m embarrassing her again…)

Anyway, here’s a preview of the next two Baby Signing Time DVDs (which I’m totally stoked about, I was bummed at first because there were only two baby ones and dozens of regular ones, but Ari (as witnessed by my awesome and totally clinically accurate YouTube experiment) seems to like the Baby ones better.)

Enjoy!

If you’re easily offended, I probably wouldn’t read this post.  Because I’m talking about people who are easily offended.  And it will probably offend you. 

I was reading this article and found out that I am already doing everything that they mention you can do to save money for your baby because I’m painfully cheap and my poor daughter is going to grow up learning the alphabet by drawing it in the sand because paper just went up fifteen cents a ream.  Though the authors gave a quick and compulsory slight nod to cloth diapers, they did mention breastfeeding, making your own baby food, buying used toys and clothes, and letting your child play with household items instead of buying toys.  (Right now Ari has a magnetic clip from the fridge and a metal box.  Aaaand she just started banging her baby monitor against the door.  Awesome.    They even encourage parents to wash clothes instead of throwing them away – who throws away dirty clothes instead of washing them?!!

But one of the things on the list really shocked me.  They mention that daycare averages $1000 a month and encourage parents to get savings accounts, trade off with friends, etc.  But with commuting and buying lunch every day at work, you’re spending almost $16,000 just to have a job.  How much are you really making? They don’t even MENTION the option of staying home and raising your own children.  Is it really worth $10 an hour to miss out on most of the waking hours of your child’s most formative years?  I used to nanny for a family, and I spent WAY more time with their kids than the parents did – and they were as involved as you could possibly be!  Everything was always stressed and rushed, there was never peace in the house until the parents had gone and there wasn’t peace again once they came home.

I realize it’s a personal decision and that you might genuinely desperately need that money, though you probably don’t need it as badly as you think you do, but Baby Center didn’t even mention that option!  They didn’t even say “reevaluate your situation to see if you could be staying home with your kids.”  As if we are afraid to even suggest that parents should be raising their own children.  I’m not even talking about “should be” but “COULD be.”  We don’t even want to say that!  We don’t want to suggest that it should be an option!  We get so offended in this country if anyone questions the way we’re raising our children, especially when it comes to the topics of breastfeeding and daycare, that we get all up in a tizzy if anyone suggests we do things differently than we’re doing them.  I remember one article that was talking about some celebrity couple or something and they had decided to use formula with their children.  The couple said, “We’ve just decided that this is the best choice for our babies.”  WHAT?!  No!  Say “This is the best fit for our family,” or “This is the best I can do,” or whatever, but formula is never the best choice for the baby.  I think sometimes we feel we have a right to justify our selfishness instead of being able to admit that a situation isn’t ideal but is the best we can do.  And that’s okay!  That’s absolutely okay, but there is a serious problem when we start calling “acceptable” the “best,” because then everyone’s standards get lowered.