The Mule

The question of whether or not babies can learn to 'self-soothe' continues to divide parenting writers and experts. Does a baby left to cry alone in their cot eventually find ways to comfort themselves, to make themselves feel better? Or do they simply stop crying after a while because they realise that nobody will come and that there is nothing they can do about it - they learn that they are helpless? Let's look at this from a fresh angle. Regardless of where you stand on this issue, let me ask you a question: How do YOU 'self-soothe'? Think for a moment. The shit is hitting the fan. You are distressed. You have lost your job. Your relationship flounders. Someone close to you is sick. The usual suspects. You feel 'emotional'; you are upset, jangled, stirred. What do you do? How do you try to regulate yourself, to bring yourself back into balance? You might sit with your difficult feelings for a while, aware that they are part of life's patte...

Dear Daughters Brace yourselves, I have a confession to make. It may or may not surprise you. Here goes... I don't like being woken up in the night! I REALLY don't like it! I can't stand it! Maybe you thought it just washed over me - all part of the service - like chopping cheese into chunks or sitting through Waybaloo - well you're wrong. Being woken up and dragged from the delicious depths of sleep two, three, four, five times a night is WAY more irritating than that! WAY MORE! And, quite frankly, I'm bloody well sick of it! It's not just the nights - which are bad enough - it's the evenings too. For five years now I have had my enjoyment of every single evening compromised in some way, either because I've been trapped in a bedroom breastfeeding, singing, storytelling or simply begging you to go to sleep, or because I've had to abandon my delicious food / fascinating film / other grown-up activity, and go back upstairs to soothe you back to...

In the past few decades, mankind has had to shake up their attitudes about a number of things. It is no longer considered to be 'ok' to degrade, humiliate, taunt or insult another human being on the grounds of their sex, race or sexuality. It still happens of course, but it is not considered acceptable. Make a sexist or racist joke down your local pub and you might get away with it. But post an image on Facebook that derides another human being, and you're likely to be reported or even prosecuted. That is, unless that image is of a child. Then it's ok. These images have been doing the rounds this week. Most commenters seem to agree that they are 'hilarious': "Comedy Gold' "Gave me a smile - thanks" "A bit of humour" "I just love this!" I beg to differ. The children in these pictures look sad, and humiliated. At a time when they clearly need help to sort out their sibling rivalries and calm their emotional ...

Responsive Parenting begins in utero, as we start, however tentatively, to recognise a life at once within and beyond ourselves, and to consider their needs alongside our own. It is this deep and strengthening connection with another person, and the resulting desire to respond to their needs rapidly and with love, that forms the bedrock of Responsive Parenting. Responsive Parenting is not about how we feed our babies, how we transport them from a to b, or where we lay them to sleep. It is deeper, and much much more important than that. Maternal responsiveness - the way mother (or other main caregiver) watches, understands and meets their child's needs - has been shown in study after study to be fundamentally important to everything from language acquisition, to social competence, to long term emotional well being. Here is my definition of Responsive Parenting: Responsive Parents: Observe their children, notice and interpret their cues, and take prompt action. Respond to the...

Sleep training, controlled crying, and crying it out: is it ok, or isn’t it? New research has just been published in the American Journal of Pediatrics suggesting that: “Behavioral sleep techniques did not cause long-lasting harms or benefits to child, child-parent, or maternal outcomes. Parents and health professionals can feel comfortable about using these techniques to reduce the population burden of infant sleep problems and maternal depression.” The research is already being hailed as a victory by those who claim that sleep training is an essential parenting rite of passage and completely harmless to the child involved. The Daily Telegraph headlined: ‘ Leave your baby to cry, scientists say ’, whilst the good old Daily Mail claimed, ‘ Letting babies cry rather than rushing to comfort them is secret to longer sleep (for infants AND parents) ’. This is not a new debate. The fight over whether or not sleep training is harmful rages constantly amidst parents, faceboo...

People make different parenting choices, and that's fine. We don't all want to sleep with our baby in our bed, carry them in a sling, or nurse them until they're three. We might not like the idea of routines, we might despise the thought of spoon feeding a baby purees. But whilst these issues are often a source of interesting and sometimes heated debate, none of them really matter, or at least, they pale into insignificance compared to the bottom line, which is this: Parents need to be Responsive . No matter what other choices you make, as long as you try your best to be consistently and lovingly responsive to your child, you are 'getting it right'. Tantrums - which mostly happen at the toddler age - are a difficult area for all parents and it's sometimes hard to know what to do. But how we respond to our children in these testing moments is very important. I've written a detailed post about responding to distress in general here: Everybody Hurts: Ten Ways...

Back in March I wrote a post about products that sexualise our children, and shared a few thoughts and images of makeup, bras and slutty fairies that I had noticed being marketed towards my four year old daughter. If you are interested and want to know more about why I think 'stuff matters', please take a look at the original post: Dolled Up: Products That Sexualise Our Children You might also like to read this article about new research that shows that girls as young as 6 are associating tight and revealing clothes with popularity and already aspire to copy this look: Huffington Post: Why Six Year Old Girls Want to be Sexy Today in leading UK retailer Monsoon I discovered a whole range of high heeled shoes that start in a size 8, and would therefore fit my 4 year old daughter. Monsoon are a fairly 'conservative' shop; their clothes usually have a vintage and old fashioned feel, so it seems doubly surprising that they would choose to market products of this nat...

Everyone is suddenly talking about Attachment Parenting . As the world recovers from the shock of a mother breastfeeding her three year old on the cover of Time , the media spotlight is being shone on this parenting approach, and it seems like everyone, even Alanis Morissette , has got something to say. As someone who breastfeeds toddlers, has a good sling collection and shares her bed with a two year old, it's great to follow the debate, but it also makes me wonder - what do babies really need? In an ideal world, would all children be 'attachment parented'? Is this what we are aiming for, all babies snuggled into their Ergo's, a sort of 'mass conversion', a 'de-buggying'? Would this make the world a better place? Parenting websites, Facebook pages and forums are consistently bogged down with people debating the right and wrong way to parent, and never more so than now, as we all wonder what we need to do to be 'mom enough'. People can get pre...

I've just had an article published on the Huffington Post - a look at the huge reaction to the Time Mag cover of Jamie Lynne Grumet breastfeeding her son. I try to explore some of the reasons why many people have responded with such disgust and hatred towards her, and ask...would they be this angry if they had been attachment parented? Click here to read the article on the Huff, or read it below. What's Behind the Grumet-Bashing? ‘Never wrestle with a pig’, a friend advised, when I suggested I might add my voice to the chorus of commentary that has followed the now infamous Time magazine cover shot of Jamie Lynne Grumet .. ‘You both get dirty, and the pig likes it’. I took her point. ‘Those bastard commenters,’ she added. ‘It won’t matter how well you write or what you say, all they’ll hear is that you breastfed your daughter til she was four, and savage you.’ Til she was FOUR? I hear you cry. Yes, you heard correctly. Now run along, off you go, dismissed. Skip to t...

The discussion continues this week about feminist writer Elizabeth Badinter's book, The Conflict , which, amongst other things, is critical of the way attachment parenting 'tethers women to the home and family'. It doesn't really surprise me in the slightest that a style of parenting that often places the needs of children first and those of adults second is coming under fire, in a culture that acclaimed analyst Elizabeth Young-Bruehl has recently dubbed, ' childist '. Even the debates about Badinter's book and its implications for motherhood and feminism seem to be completely devoid of any mention of children's needs, rights or perspective. Children in our world are frequently portrayed as 'difficult', 'naughty', 'trouble', an impediment to adult enjoyment and progress, destroyers of careers and social lives, even ' the enemies of good art '. As parents we are often encouraged to view our relationships with our childre...