If parents want to get really hard core, they always pull out the word "abuse." As in, "I can't believe you'd do that to your child, that's child abuse!"
Elizabeth Blackwell's recent Babble essay, Bad Parent: Out of Sight, elicited some shock and awe for her refusal to use a baby monitor. But can not using a baby monitor to track your child's every whimper and wheeze really be considered child abuse? I mean, folks, we do have to sleep, shower . . . poop.
If you have all five senses attuned to your child at every moment of every day, I commend you. I don't.
Neither did my parents or their parents. Heck, my grandmothers didn't have baby monitors - and no one would dare tell Grandma that the seven children she raised were anything but well-behaved, well-mannered and in perfectly good health.
Baby monitors are little more than a modern convenience. Useful for some families - including some of the parents who commented about their big houses where it's hard to hear from room to room or kids with medical conditions. For others, well, we used ours a handfull of times, and she's managed to weather the storm.
In truth, although it was dubbed a piece about the electronic monitoring devices, the heart of readers' pique is how Blackwell keeps track of her kids throughout the day and how she responds to them. When they start to cry in the morning, Blackwell says she doesn't hop right to it. And when the bedroom is quiet, she likes to let sleeping babies lie.
Letting a child cry for hours on end might be child abuse (although Dr. Ferber might disagree). But letting a child know that the minute they wake up, Mommy might be on the potty or washing dishes or yes, lolling in bed after a long night of feedings and diaper changes, isn't. As one nurse practitioner told me, shortly after I gave birth, sometimes, kids just cry. Make sure they are fed, they have been changed, they are dressed appropriately for the temperature and they are safe. If you have done everything in your power to make them stop crying, and they won't, it's OK to put them down and walk away.
We are our kids' biggest comfort, but they need to learn to self-soothe and to develop their own interests. Smushed up against Mom's chest all day where she's making them feel better, they hardly get to see the world. They also need to learn that not every moment of your day can be devoted to them. Sometimes, you have to eat, sleep, poop - just like babies.
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