A little note: When I started this post, I didn’t mean for it to turn into a soapbox rant. But it sort of did. Please take it as a straight-from-the-heart spewing of my thoughts, and not any kind of advice from an expert. (As you’ll see, I’m not big on the experts in parenting, anyway.)
One day, when my first child was about two weeks old, the doorbell to our apartment rang. My newborn moppet had fallen asleep in my arms, but I was still holding her. I could have put her down, but I didn’t want to. She was too sweet and perfect to put down. Everything in me felt right holding her. I loved her, and at that moment, loving her meant holding her close. So I answered the door with her swaddled in my arms.
As soon as I opened the door, the stranger soliciting magazines at my doorstep took one look at me and said, “Oooh, you’re going to spoil that baby.”
A torrent of new-mom insecurities rushed over me, and I stood petrified. Spoil that baby. Was I really doing something that would ruin my child? Thankfully, that craziness only lasted a few seconds before reason took hold again. Then I got irritated. Really? I was going to spoil a two-week-old by holding her? Really?? And what does “spoiling” a baby even mean? Was she going to turn rank and sour and squishy in spots?
I considered offering a snide remark about how I didn’t need parenting advice from a door-to-door salesperson, but instead I smiled, gave a polite “No, thank you,” to the magazines, and went back to snuggling my sleepy little miracle.
When I relayed this story to my mom, we snickered and shook our heads and discussed other dire warnings we’d heard about spoiling babies. Then she said, “You know, I think we need more spoiled babies. Too many children grow up abused, neglected, or otherwise damaged. If giving kids too much love and affection is spoiling them, I say let them be spoiled.“
My mama. She was so right. We live in a world where too many kids don’t get enough love and affection. Too many kids aren’t held and hugged and listened to and told they’re special and loved. There are neglectful and abusive parents, of course. But even perfectly conscientious parents can be fooled by the fear that holding sleeping babies, or picking them up when they cry, or hugging them too often will somehow turn them into monsters.
When I was looking for ideas to help my third baby sleep better, I picked up a book by some sleep experts. First, they gave very serious warnings about how important it is for babies to learn to sleep on their own. How they’ll have sleep problems forever if you don’t train them properly. Their first piece of advice was to put the baby in the crib and let him cry. Nothing new, I’d read that before. Then, they said if he cried until he threw up, I was supposed to matter-of-factly clean him up and put him back in the crib to cry again. Under no circumstances was I to pick him up otherwise. I can’t tell you how many of my mama instincts that advice violated. I cursed that book and chucked its expert opinion without hesitation. Let ’em cry ’til they puke and they’ll eventually fall asleep? I can say with absolute certainty that that advice is crap.
But it is a prime example of a stranger’s advice, expert or otherwise, that “good” parents might follow in a desperate attempt to not ruin their child. Despite how it might sound, I’m not violently opposed to all cry-it-out methods. But if a baby is left to cry so long and hard that they throw up, shouldn’t there be some comfort there? How is a child supposed to learn compassion if their most desperate cries are met with cold indifference or no response at all? Expert advice that flies in the face of every God-given motherly instinct we have isn’t worth squat, in my opinion.
The human race has been through many generations of “children should be seen and not heard” and excessive “spare the rod, spoil the child” parenting models. And look at our broken society, run primarily by people brought up under broken philosophies. Not that parenting can be blamed for all the war, poverty, injustice, and self-centeredness in the world, but I’ll bet some of it can be. It all goes back to people, doesn’t it? Maybe if more kids were cuddled and squeezed, if more babies were nuzzled close, if more parents trusted their instincts instead of senseless warnings from random strangers, we’d have a better chance at creating a compassionate society. Maybe not, but I think it’s worth a shot.
So, please, hold your babies if you feel the urge, whether they’re screaming or giggling, sleeping or waking. Spoil your kids – not by giving them anything they want, but by showering them with love and affection. Let the instinct to kiss and hug them sweep you away, and let go of the fear invented by some stodgy old codger who decided that loving your kids too much would somehow ruin them.
Because if showering kids with love and affection means spoiling them, then my mom is right – we do need more spoiled kids in the world.
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Comments 4
Yes…the cost is the Key. Don’t throw it away.
This book wasn’t even Ferber or Ezzo. It was something by these people that ran a sleep clinic or something like that. The thing is, they were obviously experts on sleep, but clearly not experts on babies. I could have told you that if you leave a baby alone to cry in their crib, they’ll eventually fall asleep. But what about all of the other considerations, like trust and attachment and the like? It’s like someone being an expert on obedience and telling you that if you beat your kid hard enough, they’ll learn to obey. Well, duh. But at what cost?
Even Ferber, the “father” of Ferberizing, has now countered his own original arguments. And the person who originally wrote the books with Ezzo has disassociated himself from him.
Ahh, I’m very familiar with the “I’ll just write a few words … oh wait, look at me ranting” feeling.