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Saturday, March 17, 2007
If you home school your kid, they will be extremely intelligent, but socially inept.If your kids go to public school, they'll barely be able to read and will do drugs at age 8.
If you breastfeed, you'll NEVER be able to be separated from your child.
If you formula feed, your child will have non-stop ear aches and colds until they are four.
If you home birth, you must dance naked in the yard under a full moon and then eat the placenta.
If you use an OB you'll be sliced stem to stern.
If you co-sleep, your child will stay in your bed until they go to college and you'll NEVER have sex AGAIN!
*sigh*
When will we move past the point of taking one potentially bad outcome of a situation and applying it to anyone and everyone that chooses that route in life?
The Columbus Dispatch ran an article this past week about co-sleeping. It was one of the most ridiculous pieces of so-called journalism that I've ever read. (Of course, I have to remind myself that journalism classes no longer include that part about telling both sides of a story...)
Now remember, I'm not really a co-sleeper, but I do support the ideas behind it.
You guys will just looooooooooove this...
On the second floor, Harrison, 5, is splayed, sideways and snoring, across his parents' king-size bed — having muscled his mother out and pushed his father, 35-year-old photographer Paul, to the edge.
Any of you co-sleepers out there actually let your children push you out of bed? Cause last time I checked, co-sleeping doesn't mean giving up your authority as a parent. Oh wait...sorry, we're talking about sensationalist press here...CLEARLY if you let your children sleep with you, you must give up ALL control.
Let's continue...
The couple aren't alone in not being alone in their bed.
They also aren't happy about the "family bed," which has inched its way into the mainstream among indulgent parents who fail to set limits for their children.
"It is everybody's Achilles' heel, I think — this rotating and not sleeping," she said. "Yet it is so gross to think you've ended up with a family bed."
Um....yeah. If you aren't happy about the "family bed" why don't you stop having a family bed? Once again...any of you co-sleepers out there that would allow your children to continue to sleep with you if it was no longer working for your family and you weren't getting any sleep?
Because yeah...sounds to me like these aren't "co-sleepers," they are indulgent parents who fail to set limits that just happen to co-sleep. So rather than lumping all co-sleepers into the "indulgent parents who fail to set limits" club, let's call a spade and spade instead of dubbing every single garden tool a spade.
More than a decade after infant-sleep expert Dr. Richard Ferber warned parents against co-sleeping and advocating a "cry-it-out" approach...
Oops...sorry. Just had to throw that line in there so that you could all laugh at Ferber STILL being referred to as an "infant-sleep expert."
Back to the train wreck...
"Everyone I know has been to some sort of sleep center," said Liz Lange, the maternity-wear designer, who "went the sleep consultant route" for help with the peripatetic nighttime ways of her son, Gus.
Umm...ok. Now see, I understand that there are kids that have sleep problems. I GET that there are children that just will NOT stay in bed at night. And yes, these kids (and their parents) probably need some help getting things figured out. That may mean a family bed (if the FAMILY is happy with that solution) or it may mean getting help in coming up with a plan to get the child to sleep in their own bed...
but...
Does anyone else see a pattern here? Very rich, very famous parents that, as Lange puts it, "work long, hard days and come home exhausted" and then have trouble having the energy to actually enforce ANY discipline on their kids?
(...and don't ya love how the author threw "peripatetic" in there to look smart? It means "walking about".)
Listen to what Lange says...
"By the time I get into bed at night," she said, "I've really had it. I can't spend from 1 to 3 in the morning running back and forth, moving them back to their beds. I will tell you that my daughter does kick and spin. My husband will swear she pulls the chest hairs out of his chest. But if I don't make an issue out of this, I do — we do — get a decent amount of sleep, at least six hours. The only thing that gives me a little bit of hope and comfort is the thought that I'm sure I won't have teenagers sleeping in my bed."
In other words...it's hard work being a parent. I think I'll just let my kids run amok and hope that some day I get more sleep.
Uh huh...
Anyone else read this article and think "this has nothing to do with co-sleeping, this has to do with lazy parenting?"
Quite honestly, I've yet to meet a co-sleeping family that has these types of issues.
It's kinda like the mom on SuperNanny that everyone wanted to dub as being "AP" simply because she was breastfeeding a 14 month old and carried her around a lot. (We'll ignore the fact that she hit, slapped and spanked her kids non-stop.)
Co-sleeping isn't the problem here folks, lack of parenting is.
Labels: Co-Sleeping, In the News