Technically this was insomnia, but it didn't occur until 4:30 am, so I think I just took the melatonin early. I do feel well-rested.

I found the explicit/intentional walking away from wailing part of sleep training pretty easy, though my wife hated it. I suppose that makes me the moral monster in the relationship. I'm still pretty good at letting him cry for a while in the hopes that he goes back to sleep. It usually works!

Parenting-trolls are the worst trolls of all.

Also, I'm up (relatively) early because we're transitioning into daycare this week, where the expensive and yet marginally-paid caregivers will be responsive in some slightly different way than we are! Again, we must be monsters for subjecting him to this.

My least favorite book ever had all these diagrams you were supposed to fill out to get to know your baby's sleep habits. In the very last chapter, they dealt with extenuating circumstances. There was one paragraph dealing with "What if you work outside the house?" and their answer was something like "Then you'll have a tough time doing all these absolutely necessary steps, won't you." Except more politely.

Mara is finally learning to sleep by herself through the night consistently, though not to fall asleep on her own yet. (It's a catch-22 because she won't do it until we leave her alone but if we leave her alone, she's unsupervised at Prime Pica Time, whereas if one of us rocks her she's able to ignore or overcome her urge to chew.) Broken babies can grow up to be pretty awesome, not that I recommend neglectful insecure attachment as a parenting strategy.

As far as shaken babies go, though, something I find scary, we were taught that the signs a baby may have been shaken or otherwise abused in usual ways are TEN-4 acronym's suggestions: bruises on the torso/trunk, ears, or neck in a child under 4 years and any bruising at all before 4 months.

What does extensive baby crying signal? It shows the lack of experience, knowledge and/or support of the baby's caregivers.

Colic is the baby's way of saying you're not supportive enough!

(And duh, of course you lack knowledge. If you knew why the thing was crying, maybe you could get it to stop.)

I often feel alarmed by advice like the bit of first-person in the second link about how, when one is really at the very end of one's rope with the baby, and simply cannot take it any more, one must finally break down and ask one's male spouse for help. Like, I thought about shaking my baby or smothering her, but then, I thought, no, there is another slightly less awful last resort.

I thought, no, there is another slightly less awful last resort.

Let the father take the rap for shaking or smothering it.

What does extensive baby crying signal?

A baby?

Extensive information content signals have entropy, extensive baby crying signals a banana.

On the topic of parenting in general, I went to my first playgroup this weekend because on a recent thread several of you said you'd managed to meet people that way. It's a monthly meetup for gay parents and the adult chat was mostly about how the various families were built, which is a little odd but whatever. It does mean that on the way home I had my first substantive conversation with Nia about where babies come from, but she was only interested in hearing about how surrogacy works.

Remember, kids aren't really prone to crying because on the veldt they would have been eaten by lions if they cried all the time (yes you slackers who don't click links, it says this). And god, the addendum.

ADDENDUM: I was raised in a middle-class family with a depressed mother, harsh father and overall emotionally unsupportive environment--not unlike others raised in the USA. I have only recently realized from extensive reading about the effects of early parenting on body and brain development that I show the signs of undercare--poor memory (cortisol released during distress harms hippocampus development), irritable bowel and other poor vagal tone issues, and high social anxiety.

Seriously, irritable bowel?

Hey why have a number of my friends taught their kids a rudimentary sign language? Is it so they won't have to tolerate not having things before they have speech to ask for them or is it supposed to jump-start language learning, a thing that happens on its own without intervention? I think I am not presenting this trend in a favorable light.

14 is your friendly resident parenting-trend-in-non-favorable-light-presenter.

We did some of the sign language, for the former reason.
I'll just note here that our current baby is the easiest baby I've ever heard of which probably means she's doing to be doing drugs as a teen or something.

It sometimes helps facilitate super frustrating interactions, because the older baby wants something specific and the parent is dancing around like a monkey trying to figure it out. They can sign "food" before they have the mouth/throat coordination to say it out loud. Or "hot" if the food is too hot - useful.

13: I was raised in a middle-class family with a depressed mother, harsh father and overall emotionally unsupportive environment As you can see, it has turned me into a total asshole.

Yeah, a lot of kids have a fairly long period where they have things they want to intentionally communicate before they have much expressive language -- the year or so from ten months or so on to two-ish can be like that. You get some very entertaining games of baby-charades out of a kid in that stage trying to convey something like "The ball I was playing with rolled under the couch, can you get down here and fish it out with your giant arms, Mommy?" But purposefully teaching kids signs for that period is a thing people do.

We never did -- both of mine talked very early (and incessantly) and weren't much with the manual dexterity, so it didn't make sense. All my experience of baby-mime is with other people's kids.

16: Alternatively, my oldest child, who was the easiest baby ever seen in my circle of friends/family, has grown into the easiest teenager to parent imaginable. Never had to be disciplined for anything (I'm absolutely not kidding about that: anything, ever, and he's about to turn 16), on track to be valedictorian, and a two-sport athlete. Which, of course, tricked me into following him up with two normal children whose main goal in life is to push boundaries until their parents snap. I had such a high estimation of my calm and efficient parenting skills, and Jesus Christ has my daughter ever wrecked that delusion. Turns out I'm a short-tempered shouter, much like her.

Yeah, mine aren't nearly as saintly as Apo's eldest, but they were both well on the easy side of the spectrum as babies, and are now on the very easy side as older kids.

I've really liked baby sign language. My friends' kids tend to know a few signs ("more", "all done", "drink"), and it's really helpful because signs are easier than trying to figure out what someone else's toddler is trying to say. Plus, when you do figure it out, they get really happy.

Most parenting books are insane. I think the requirements for getting a book contract have to be first and foremost, no understanding of statistics or probability, and second, some kind of mental health or personal trauma issue that one is going to work out by providing bad advice.

Wow, I had missed the addendum. It totes sucks that her mom was so selfish as to be depressed.

providing bad advice

And a flip side of the horrible-parenting-book issue is that kids are awfully adaptable and resilient, so very little of the advice is actually importantly bad; whatever you end up doing with your kid, within a plausible range of making sure they're fed, warm, and not injured, they'll most likely be all right. Meaning that someone just making up random parenting advice is mostly not doing any harm (if you don't count driving the parents loopy) and won't get any meaningful negative feedback.

I have no idea what drives him. God knows neither of his parents were well-behaved or high achievers. Sometimes you just get lucky, I guess. Noah has settled into a fairly manageable kid, but man, Cassie is going to put me in an early grave. If the first 5-1/2 years presage her teenage years at all, I'm in for a world of hurt.

I think the requirements for getting a book contract have to be first and foremost, no understanding of statistics or probability, and second, some kind of mental health or personal trauma issue that one is going to work out by providing bad advice.

This makes writing a parenting advice book sound so tempting!

Given the babysplosion, I should put in a plug for literally Dr Spock's Baby And Child Care. Not most of the book, which I ignored, but he had a great appendix of diseases/injuries/conditions that might apply to your baby, and why not to worry about most of them -- very clear. In the first couple of months, I spent a fair amount of time flipping through it for symptoms, and figuring out that whatever it was wasn't a problem.

I think it was unimaginative a couple years ago who pointed out that the adoption advice is kind of the flipside of the SWPL advice. Your soon-to-be adopted child is resilient and will overcome a rough start if there was a rough start! You will be fine!

24: I count it as bad advice if it makes a mother irritated for no reason, even if the kid ends up fine. I got yelled at over Christmas by all my female relatives for picking up my fourteenth-month-old cousin. She's twenty pounds! I did not need to be yelled at.

Yelled at why? Because you can't lift things in your delicate condition?

Oh, the books are stupid and bad, but they don't produce the sort of bad outcomes that would let you identify them as stupid and bad, because they annoy the parents rather than damaging the kids all that much.

My office had a move when I was in my eighth month with Newt, and I got yelled at repeatedly for lifting file boxes. No one who objected had an answer when I asked "So, is someone else going to move these for me?"

not to worry about most of them

This is possibly the most useful parenting skill you can acquire. 99% of your visits to the doctor will be either "give them Tylenol and fluids" or "yeah, that will go away in a couple of days". Followed by your co-pay and you catching the RSV that's crawling on everything in the waiting room.

29: Yes. If lifting 20lbs were all it took to lose the baby, we wouldn't be having an abortion debate.*)

*really don't recommend pointing this out at Christmas. fyi.

*really don't recommend pointing this out at Christmas. fyi.

Interesting point—say more?

I have a nearly seven month old baby and have been going through all of the ridiculousness one would expect of me in trying to get him to sleep. I can't stand to let him cry. He spends about half the night in his crib and half the night curled up with me like a baby gorilla.

That is the exact same argument I use about yoga! Really, if there were a particular way you could hold your body such that it would cause pregnancy loss, even if it had to be done at a very precise moment in pregnancy, don't you think people would have figured it out by now, given how very much lots of people want not to be pregnant?

It's true, people have figured everything out about all subjects in which they are interested.

In keeping with my 'don't worry about it' theme, don't worry about it. Whatever it takes to keep yourself sane, sleeping with you won't do him any harm at all.

36: Yoga, I wouldn't worry about miscarrying, but I might worry about you hurting yourself. With all the loosened ligaments and such, wouldn't there be an increased risk of sprains and the like? But I'm sure trained yoga people know what the risks are.

If I knew what it took to make me sane, this would be a different life. I'm trying to perfect the position in the arm chair in which he and I can both stay asleep. He's always super happy in the morning; I am happy about half the time.

There are special yoga-for-the-gravid classes and whatnot.

The other reason to do baby sign language is that babies are really cute when they sign.

Sometimes called "prenatal yoga", which is strange, because in most cases the practitioner has already been born.

35: My baby is that age and we successfully sleep-trained him about two months ago. With my sample size of 1, I deeply recommend getting over "can't stand to let him cry" for long enough to do the progressive-waiting thing (aka Ferberizing).

40: This too shall pass. Sleep deprivation is awful, but it lasts a limited amount of time.

Reaching back into the mists of time for things that helped... will he tolerate staying in the crib if he's got your hand through the bars? If you can get him to go out like that, it's easier to sneak your hand away from a sleeping baby than it is to put a baby that's gone to sleep in your lap down. Everything depends on the individual kid, of course, so there's a good chance this won't be any use.

I am taking an online CLE course in which a woman is explaining to me that the amount of alcohol in a drink does relate to its ability to get you drunk.

44 me. Not sure what happened to the signature there.

39: From this blog about alignment that I have been obsessed with recently:

The hormone relaxin inhibits uterine contraction, increases the length of the interpubic ligament, and softens the cervix. It does not increase the laxity of the joints nor affect the whole body, making pregnant women more susceptible to joint injury. About 30 years ago, it was hypothesized that pregnancy hormones created an all-over joint hypermobility, a notion widely spread in the 1980s. More recent research has shown that there is NO CORRELATION between pregnancy hormones and joint mobility.

Lots of the advice about yoga during pregnancy is, unsurprisingly, really fucking annoying. "No balance poses, you might fall over!" No actually, I'm going to do balance poses especially a lot, because it seems pretty useful to me to keep on top of the way your center of balance is changing.

I suppose this is good information for a lawyer to know and that I could do worse than having an excuse to read unfogged while a lady tells me that drinking gets you drunk.

Thanks LB. I could try reaching my hands through the bars. He goes down fairly easily once he's asleep, but when he wakes up, he wants to be a baby gorilla again. I actually don't mind sleeping with him so long as I can sleep too.

I guess that's about as redundant as this CLE about getting your clients drunk.

39: With all the loosened ligaments and such

One of my hippie-mama friends claims to have cured herself of chronic pain/orthopedic injury from old snowboarding wipeouts by repositioning various bones and ligaments and stuff while she was pregnant. (She accompanied this anecdote by doing a series of movements meant to convey moving her pelvis around inside her, that looked like a particularly inept version of popping and locking.)

48.1: Huh. Who knew - I thought that increased joint mobility in late pregnancy was uncontroversial medical knowledge. I admit that I didn't notice any increased limberness at all, but I'm so stiff generally I thought it just didn't work on me.

Good to learn that one was nonsense.

I'm not trying to be catty. I really am listening to a CLE on being responsible in serving alcohol in your office. And am low on sleep.

Except for 37, nothing you've said seems catty to me. And even there, I excuse it because it was funny.

I actually don't mind sleeping with him so long as I can sleep too.

Yeah, I had a month or so when Sally was maybe eighteen months old when I was sleeping on the floor of her room next to her bed, with her holding on to my hand. Not ideal, but I was getting a night's sleep. I think I had one of those foam camping pads, whatever you call them.

Thanks Annelid. I'm trying to be pleasant again.

I wouldn't mind sleeping on the floor. We have a couple yoga mats I could use. So I think I'll try that. This thread has dovetailed to a lovely conclusion and now all that's left to do is hours of sexual innuendo.

Who has a recipe for cooking big baguettes?

56: Sir Cooks-a-Lot

You know what they say about men with big baguettes.

They have big pizza stones.

They can feed a whole village if Jesus is talking.

The closer and closer it gets to birth the happier I am that I had some* new-born baby experience with my little brother. Because half the time I'm reading books with 'advice' and thinking, 'aye, right, are you fucking insane?'

Hopefully the insouciance I am sort of faking won't turn back and bite me on the arse.

* quite a lot, but it was 20 years ago.

It's like riding a bicycle. Buck was in roughly your position -- spent a lot of newborn time with cousins and his oldest niece when he was in his late teens -- and all the skills came back and were a great deal of help, especially considering that I'd hardly met a newborn before we had ours.

Yeah. It helps that I did some of his care from when he was a couple of weeks old, and a lot from when he was a couple of months. My mum couldn't afford to (or somehow didn't want to) take full maternity leave, so went back to work insanely early. And she worked shifts, so I'd come in from work, collect him from the child-minders, and have him either all evening, or all night depending on her shifts.

So, while I forget some of the details and I'm sure I'll be discombobulated when he (the baby) turns up, I'm not scared of dropping them, changing nappies, bathing, bottle-feeding, burping, or whatever.

You want to watch out for bicycles biting you in the ass.

I should put in a plug for literally Dr Spock's Baby And Child Care

How do people feel about the Sears book?

I'm not scared of dropping them

My sister's pediatrician routinely greeted her with "have you dropped your baby yet?" until finally she came in and said yeah, he rolled off the couch.

65: It's a huge guilt trip along exactly the lines addressed in the OP -- unless you devote every fiber of your being to anticipating the baby's every need before the baby even twitches, you're breaking its brain. Ideally, the baby should be duct-taped to you at all times. You want a moment to breathe for yourself? You're a monster.

If you're completely immune to be being bothered by that kind of guilt-tripping, I thought the practical advice was pretty good as they go.

The second link in the OP is to Babycenter, which is so much saner than What to Expect. (Babycentre is even saner, esp. on the topic of alcohol consumption, unsurprisingly.)

What to Expect is really charming in the updates for dads, every other one of which contains the phrase "who knows? You might get lucky!" The What to Expect dad is this poor, confused, priapic beast who doesn't understand what's happening to his mate and just wants to poke her.

If you're completely immune to be being bothered by that kind of guilt-tripping

I must be, because I've been skimming and mostly just appreciating the practical advice and thinking, "my, you people have a lot of children."

The What to Expect dad is this poor, confused, priapic beast who doesn't understand what's happening to his mate and just wants to poke her.

I can't possibly relate to this.

65: No one wants to hear about my issues with the book anymore, but really they revolve around his mommy drive-bys and ideology. A lot of his practical advice seems fine -- when to worry about a fever, what to do if the kid isn't pooping, etc.

(Also, he has perhaps recently taken steps to separate his empire from his son's loathsome anti-vaxxing empire, so props to him if true.)

just wants to poke her

Facebook is everywhere.

re: 68.last

Everyone knows men are incompetent fools, completely under the thrall of their base desires. See, every advert not for cars, alcohol, or aftershave, ever.

69: The guilt-tripping is pretty specifically aimed at the ladies, so this makes sense.

74: I may be closer to the W2E dad than I want to admit.

I've really liked baby sign language. My friends' kids tend to know a few signs ("more", "all done", "drink"), and it's really helpful because signs are easier than trying to figure out what someone else's toddler is trying to say. Plus, when you do figure it out, they get really happy.

I've had the same experience with my nieces & nephew and some of my friends' kids.

It's also really fun (for you and them) to do signs that aren't strictly utilitarian, like "party" and "power to the people." Oh, how I wish we had taken video.

When she was 2 or so, we taught the oldest one to run through "I love you" in ASL, hang 10, rock-n-roll, and hook 'em horns. Obviously this had nothing to do with communication and was purely for our own amusement.

I liked the Penelope Leach book a lot.

Oddly enough, as the kid's gotten older, I've had no desire whatsoever to even look at parenting books. Maybe once they get language their problems start to feel too unique and specific for general advice books to be of much use, or maybe it's just that the baby books were so useless I feel burned.

The What to Expect dad is this poor, confused, priapic beast who doesn't understand what's happening to his mate and just wants to poke her.

And needs to be reminded not to get upset that his wife might (might!) be gaining weight. I laughed heartily at that part.

Friends of mine have a three-and-a-half-year-old son O., who has CP. He doesn't vocalize much but he knows about 200 signs. I was hanging out with him yesterday at Mrs. K-sky's baby shower and his mom asked me to watch him for a while. He was signing something very vigorously and I had no idea what & felt like I really needed to step up my game. (It turned out to be "boy" -- another friend had her 12-y-o son in tow, who O. wanted to play with.)

Fortunately he was adequately entertained by BALLOON FIGHT so it was only frustrating for me.

23: we sometimes talk to our kids about our emotional lives: about whether we're in a good mood or a bad mood, and why; about how dealing with aging parents (their grandparents) is difficult and sometimes makes us sad; about how going to work can be a pain in the ass but also rewarding, but that the pain the ass part sometimes leaves more obvious marks than the rewarding part.

We didn't begin doing this consciously, and we have couple friends who are very put off by it: "Aren't you worried that they'll feel insecure if they think you're depressed or something?" I suppose that's possible, but I'm not convinced. Of course, I'm also not convinced that we're doing much good. Our kids certainly don't seem more attuned to our humanity than other people's kids do.

I do, though, think my mom was onto something when she regularly told us -- my sister and I, that is -- that the statute of limitations on parental crimes would expire on our thirtieth birthdays.

39: I chatted with my midwife about the extreme caution common to almost all prenatal exercise recommendations. (You could go for a walk! Okay, but what if I want exercise.) She says that most of the recommendations are conservative, because there's not much research on intense exercise during pregnancy. Why? Because only one in five women is exercising regularly when she gets pregnant. And one could see how a new motivation to be Healthy and Good could lead to injury in someone not accustomed to exercise. She said just to pay attention to how I felt and that it wasn't a time to push it and to back off if there were problems.

So I've basically done what feels comfortable. I had to stop running at about eight weeks (too much pain, and to be fair, I'm not a big fan of running), but I did elliptical (yawn) and weightlifting (squats and deadlifts at about 40% of capacity, free weights and core exercises) until about 24 weeks, and now as I don't fit into any of my workout clothes and my hips feel like they're really only loosely attached (maybe there's no extra laxity but man things are not feeling like they're in the right place), I'm swimming and doing bodyweight strength training and prenatal vinyasa yoga DVDs.

41: You have to watch with prenatal yoga though as a lot of it is geared toward sitting and thinking happily about your baby, which is all well and good but not always best for getting a workout.

With tree pose, of course. If your balance is off, then you need to retrain it safely to prevent falls. That is what tree pose is for!

On attachment parenting generally, while the guilt-tripping is evil, I do think that the general principle of "Surrender completely and do whatever the baby wants", to the extent that it's practical without making yourself miserable, is actually easier on the parents than the reverse style of guilt-tripping where you get told that if you don't have the baby sleep-trained and on a rigid feeding schedule ASAP you're damaging it. I mean, total surrender works for babies under a year or so rather than older kids who you do have to set some limits for, and has to bow to the demands of adult life like work and remaining sane and all that, but where you can, I think it's less of a strain on everyone than the alternatives.

YMMV, of course.

kids are awfully adaptable and resilient, so very little of the advice is actually importantly bad; whatever you end up doing with your kid, within a plausible range of making sure they're fed, warm, and not injured, they'll most likely be all right
Alternatively, everyone is fucking up their children in roughly equivalent amounts.

Apo excepted.

The ways in which you are screwing up parenthood are far too individualized to be addressed by any one book. You should probably start paying attention to a more diverse set of criticisms.

85: I THOUGHT I'D EXPLAINED THIS ALL TO YOU PEOPLE.

APPARENTLY NOT CLEARLY ENOUGH.

I've written presidentially about my brother and his wife and family before. (Ie he deletes my phone calls from his phone log, etc.) This isn't exactly a continuation of that, but somewhat.

Nothing makes them more pissed off than something along the lines of "kids are resilient, do your best" or "it will come out in the wash (figuratively)". They will argue you to the death that NO EVERY FUCKING DETAIL IS OF EXTREME IMPORTANCE. This makes vacation planning really awesome because cutting corners on parenting never ever figures in to coordinating with other families in a temporary, travel situation.

86: I did find myself explaining the Biggie Smalls/Tupac feud while driving my kindergartener to school the other day after a song came on the satellite radio. Then this morning over breakfast, she began singing "Biggie Biggie Biggie can't you see / Sometimes your words just hypnotize me / And I just love your sexy ways / That's why [unintelligible] paid." Followed by: "Mom, did you know Notobolous B.I.G. got shot?"

I think for them to really prove their point they need a control kid they can screw up and a kid where they focus on every fucking detail.

I guess 83 is right but I really have seen a few parents who seem to have been really fucked up by excessive attachment parenting. Of course maybe if it hasn't been that something else would have fucked them up. In my own case the kid definitely would have benefited from more and clearer boundaries earlier.

as the kid's gotten older, I've had no desire whatsoever to even look at parenting books.

Yeah, we stopped completely from some time during the boy's second year until I decided I should read up on how to tell your kid his parents are divorcing.

I have never heard someone claim that co-sleeping was child abuse, but I have been told, by CA's s-i-l while we were on vacation, that leaving O to cry for 10 minutes before he naps was child abuse.

88: I think we can agree that whichever the meaning, apo is fucking up children in non-standard amounts.

Meanwhile while I was travelling for work the kids were allowed to buy a racing car app that is not age appropriate and yesterday they said they got one car upgrade and were soon going to buy the next model, "Pussy Wagon." I then compounded the problem by telling them not to say that at school- they deduced that wagon is not a bad word so now they are empowered by their newfound knowledge of the word Pussy.
Also I'm home with the 3 year old who can't go to school because he threw up yesterday afternoon even though he's totally fine and he's spending the entire day on the ipad because I have to work from home calling in to meetings (and comment here, of course.)

92: Perhaps a better strategy would be to shift parenting styles frequently with any given child, so as to minimize the impact of any particular mistakes.

It is important to understand that your child might be a fuck-up for reason unrelated to your divorce.

Your child might also be brilliant for reasons unrelated to your parenting.

Divorced parents are often incredible scientists, able to determine the cause (the other parent) of anything not perfect with their child without any hint of evidence.

he's spending the entire day on the ipad

Oh man, I am seriously going to have to start policing their iPad use. The other day I realized that the song I wasn't really paying attention to that the two little ones had been (quietly) listening to over and over again and cackling about was this. You can guess the search terms that led them to it. I guess I should be grateful it wasn't something way worse.

I think we can agree that whichever the meaning, apo is fucking up children in non-standard amounts.

Rat-orgasms?

I guess I should be grateful it wasn't something way worse.

90 percent of Apomania contains sex references. Apparently, people also frown on letting your children listen to Girl Talk.

Thankfully, my daugher is about to be 21 so I can let her listen to anything!

gypsy jew, poop, pee,tacoma,lady gaga

That's a fairly unlikely series of keywords, I must say.

I learned to sign as a baby BEFORE IT WAS COOL damnit. It's just not the same anymore.

102: O grabs my phone, hits the music button, hits album, and chooses All Day. Then he carefully puts the phone down and plays with something else while listening to his jams. (Sometimes he chooses Music Together songs. But it's usually Girl Talk.)

Yeah, we stopped completely from some time during the boy's second year until I decided I should read up on how to tell your kid his parents are divorcing.

Pretend you're going somewhere fun like Disneyland and then say "surprise! Actually mommy and daddy are going to live in different houses now! This is my south bronx basement apartment!"

97: shoulda known "Joe Biden Racing" was a problem.

The iPad thing is kind of nonplussing. I digitized my CDs, so when it's time for them to go rooting through my music collection so they can bask in their dad's awesome taste, is it all going to be on an iPad connected to some home media server? Or is Spotify going to mean I don't have perfect influence over them?

Dr. Sears is not helpful on this point.

Does Dr. Dre have a parenting book?

105:

The first song is awesome on All Day.

"Yes, I'll only love you half as much from now on, but look on the bright side: that's way more than what your mother will get."

Really enjoying the vindication of parenting style that comes from having a 26 year old child come for a visit. In your face, judgmental friends-in-law who think that harsh discipline is the only way to deal with rebellious (and bad judgment having) teens.

You would be shocked at how many people think that their children need to know how they feel about the other parent.

"Your father left us."

Your mother/father is a whore."

"Your father/mother decided that he/she doesnt love me."

When questioned about it, they say "I cant lie to my child!"

In your face, judgmental friends-in-law who think that harsh discipline is the only way to deal with rebellious (and bad judgment having) teens.

Parenting often feels like driving on ice. I HAVE to turn the wheel or hit my brakes!!

111: indeed.

My parenting lesson this weekend, from the bowling alley: No matter how many times you let your toddler win an Candyland,* as soon as they're old enough to beat you at anything they will gleefully refuse to reciprocate.

I'm still the champ at long division.

*Actually a bad practice, as we discovered at the first playdate involving two four-year-olds, both of whom were accustomed to winning at Candyland.

"Mom, did you know Notobolous B.I.G. got shot?"

That was Discobolus B.I.G., and he didn't get shot, he got hit by a javelin.

Chimpanzees hunted down and ate Red Colobolus B.I.G. because he was frontin' and/or delicious.

117: when I was a wee lad (three or so?) my mom caught one of her friends cheating in a game of Candyland against me.

We have all the books mentioned upthread, plus a couple from Brazelton (our pediatrician trained and coauthored with him) but my favorite title is this one. It's the only book you need- it says right on the cover that it's complete and authoritative!

Administrative employees make up an increasing share of the university's higher-paid people. The school employs 353 people earning more than $200,000 a year. That is up 57% from the inflation-adjusted pay equivalent in 2001. Among this $200,000-plus group, 81 today have administrative titles, versus 39 in 2001.

--Wall Street Journal

Maybe once they get language their problems start to feel too unique and specific for general advice books to be of much use, or maybe it's just that the baby books were so useless I feel burned.

One book I highly recommend to anyone with a lot of contact with kids (in addition to parents, aunts and uncles, maybe even teenage baby-sitters) is Playful Parenting by Lawrence Cohen. Practical, entirely non-shaming, brief, and truly helpful to understand some of the utterly maddening things kids do and why you should get down on the floor and play with the Playskool farm with your kid even though it's really boring.

(I've been an evangelist for this book for years, so I've probably said this at least a couple of times before.)

118 pleases me.

BABY WAS SIGNING WHEN SIGNING WASN'T COOL

Hm, this is counteracting some of the warm fuzzies from this morning's pleasant day-care interaction: I appear to be lining Mitt Romney's pocket. http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/01/25/how-bright-horizons-took-care-of-bain-capital-over-the-years/

FWIW, I had very positive experiences with a BH here. Despite the Bain connection.

Blume, that alignment site is addictive.

Oh, I hear nothing but praise for BH's care; they're regularly ranked a great place to work and have low turnover, which is awesome in a childcare situation; the curriculum looks good (the slight silliness of a curriculum for 6-month-olds notwithstanding); the location is incredibly convenient. I just didn't know they were a Bain project.

Huh, I've found BH to be the perfect embodiment of daycare corporatism (just like Mitt!)- bland satisfactory corporate daycare but nothing spectacular. We've only used them on a temporary basis for a few days here and there so maybe it's because we never established a longer term relationship with them. Also a former coworker was involved in a scandal where one of the workers pushed his kid and the center was sanctioned by the state.

We were there full time, and it was great, but it's obviously a big corporate behemoth with a lot of different branches and kinds of places. Also one of the few places that's really designed and well set up for working parents (no 3pm closings or insanely long holidays etc etc).

True, our daycare follows a university schedule which is not so convenient when you are not affiliated with said university. 7am dropoff option was awesome.
I'd love to see the curriculum at the David H. Koch Technology Children's Center.

re: 128

Yes. Just started browsing through it, some interesting stuff. Also, watching the quad stretch video, the child mayhem going on around is amusing.

my hips feel like they're really only loosely attached (maybe there's no extra laxity but man things are not feeling like they're in the right place)

No, there's definitely weird hip things going on. Isn't that related to the stretching of the interpubic ligament, though? Looking at diagrams online, it seems like it holds the two sides of the pelvis together.

Bleg: if anyone subscribes to The Nation, will you please download a pdf of this article and e-mail it to me at kelmanari AT geemail DOT com? Thanks.

Also please FedEx me a really delicious Linzertorte.

Your library doesn't subscribe?

I'm starting to fear VW is working up to asking for the corpse of Roy Orbison in clingfilm.

102: O grabs my phone, hits the music button, hits album, and chooses All Day. Then he carefully puts the phone down and plays with something else while listening to his jams. (Sometimes he chooses Music Together songs. But it's usually Girl Talk.)

All--and I mean ALL--Jane ever wants to listen to these days is "Dirty Old Town" (Pogues version).

137: apparently not. Or if it does, I'm an idiot. One of these is more likely than the other, I'll grant you.

138: I've got plenty already, thanks.

140: Hm. That article seems like it may be excluded from my library's subscription.

142: maybe that's the problem I'm having. I might need an actual subscriber subscriber, not just some free-riding scum like you and me.

Never mind. I found it. [Database provider] apparently does not put authors' names in the metadata for book reviews, for that magazine. Because who would ever search that way.

I had been a free rider for several years -- I think they forgot that I'd stopped renewing my subscription -- but I guess they've noticed now. No dice.

143: Sending it now.

Sent, but on preview see I'm redundant.

VW is going to have multiple copies, I guess.

Thanks, everyone!

Huh, I've found BH to be the perfect embodiment of daycare corporatism (just like Mitt!)- bland satisfactory corporate daycare but nothing spectacular.

My impression also. We've used BH only occasionally/sporadically over the past 5 or 6 years, and have never had any complaints. The daily progress reports are a bit much (must there really be a "learning objective" to cutting and pasting with a jar of Elmer's glue and a pile of brightly coloured construction paper?), but that kind of outcome-oriented measurement is not just corporate anymore, it is the air that we (and even more so, that our kiddies) now breathe.

Still, there's something about the BH daycare setup that has always made me think of the Ayn Rand daycare in that Simpsons episode.

Re: Dr. Sears (the father, not the kooky anti-vax-enabling son): I think his AP ideology is ridiculous Rousseauian romanticism, but I've always found his specifically medical advice quite reassuring. He's the one who tells you, 'You don't have to rush to the ER just because your baby has a slight fever.' And then he gives you a guilt trip for not being as effortlessly maternal as his wife Martha. (Martha is registered nurse, a lactation consultant, and the mother of eight children, you monster).

126: Ha, my sister used to work at a Bright Horizons and hated it. I should send her that article.

Back when I was hating on early parenting books there weren't even blogs to complain about them on.

38

... Whatever it takes to keep yourself sane, sleeping with you won't do him any harm at all.

Don't adults sleeping with infants sometimes roll over and crush them to death? Or are such reports just a coverup for infanticide?

91: my older daughter was fascinated/horrified to learn that there were any casualties in the east coast/west coast rap rivalry.

also the first track of all day rules, and is our go-to "let's get these customers into the motherfucking store to buy some stuff!"

The worst parenting trolls are the "cry it out" types that say anybody can do it - cause they let their babies cry for hours and hours. And they are very sure nothing bad happened. The article is dumb. Cry it out is dumber.

Don't adults sleeping with infants sometimes roll over and crush them to death?

Also, never pick up someone else's baby, because then it'll smell different and the mother won't recognise it.

Used some of my quality insomnia time to try to get a little background* on the author and her academic mileu. I'm not up to a coherent or comprehensive recap, but it I'd gloss it as Paleo Child-Rearing** (per this column on Narvaez's research***) seasoned with a healthy dose of "everybody and everything is getting worse every single day."**** Here's a recent symposium at Notre Dame which seems to illustrate the nexus of ideas. And here's a blog post at Skeptical Mothering that is a more in-depth response to the article in the OP (including some reference checking). I'd write more on this fascinating topic but suddenly I am run over by a truck.

*I call it GIO--Google It Out. I do it because I was formula-fed as a baby. Otherwise I'd understand that I should be dialing my kids in the middle of the night to let them know I love them. Something like that. I think I might have misunderstood the assignment theory.

**On the veldt if your baby cried at night, you'd be killed by wild animals.

***I was tempted to use scare quotes around 'research' but I did not in fact delve deeply enough to justify my complete skepticism so that would have been unfair.

****Out of phase with the lead led to bad stuff but we're all better now***** view of the world.

*****Or we will be when we finally get the leadheads out of Congress and other positions of power.

Try not to break your baby so easily, you reprehensible asshole.

She came close to being that blunt in another Psychology Today column:

Take home message: If you want a smart baby...

1, (Almost) NEVER PUT IT DOWN!

2, Keep it CALM.

3. Feed it MOTHER's milk. Plan and work to breastfeed for at least a year if not longer (ancestral patterns were 2-5 years; Hewlett & Lamb, 2005).

4. Use ALL CAPS when talking to your BABY.

The worst parenting trolls are the "cry it out" types that say anybody can do it - cause they let their babies cry for hours and hours. And they are very sure nothing bad happened. The article is dumb. Cry it out is dumber.

Perhaps you should look into what "cry it out" means? It's not crying for hours on end.

156

Here a couple of references which take the risk of overlaying more seriously. One , two . From the second:

It's certainly a stretch to say that every instance of infant overlay will cause the infant to die; After all, SIDS/SUDI death rates are measured per 10,000 population. But to pretend that it never happens, and when it does, it's the fault of unsafe cosleeping, is equally a stretch (See my similar post on head covering as a SIDS risk factor).

"Cry it out" was definitely incompatible with me parenting / personality style. Basically, if you do it you are a heartless monster and if you don't do it you are weak and clearly incapable of carrying out the basic responsibilities of parenting.

The problem with the article in the OP is that it wildly conflates everything. By "stress" do we mean "neglect in an orphanage" or "sitting in a carrier while mom takes a five minute shower?" By "baby" do we mean "two-week-old" or "eight-month-old"?

Likewise, by "cry it out" do we mean "let your two-week-old scream for hours?" or "wait five minutes before attending to your nine-month-old when she wakes up?"

This is basically true of all advice to all pregnant women. Take a study, assume parameters beyond the worst case scenario, and make a recommendation. You actually won't kill your child in utero if you sleep on your right side or even if you roll over onto your back.

160- There are other risk factors that can be mitigated to still allow cosleeping. Firmer beds, no alcohol before bed (for the adults, not the kid.)
My favorite contradiction is about front vs. back sleeping. If you put your kids to sleep on their front they'll DIE but if you put them to sleep on their back they won't develop neck muscles and will be delayed crawlers and physically inadequate for life. Solution- supervised tummy time every day! Our third kid would not sleep on his back, we let him sleep on his front but bought one of those Angel Care monitors that beeps if your baby stops breathing.

162.1: Yes. For instance from the Skeptical Mothering blog post linked in 157 referring to one of the studies she cite:

When they discuss specific circumstances that cause stress for babies, Dawson et. al refer to babies in Romanian orphanages, and those with clinically depressed mothers. Note that these are serious, long-term, global stressors, not simply a short period of stress, confined to a certain part of the day, for a limited duration.

163: More evidence we weren't meant to sleep on dry land.

162/167 is exactly right. Psych Today loves generalizing from those horrific Romanian orphanages.

I'm the best!

More evidence we weren't meant to sleep on dry land.

Sleeping in a hot tub is remarkably easy if you are absolutely exhausted and, rather to my surprise, I didn't drown.

All you'd need is a neck pillow made out of kelp, and baby can bob safely through to morning.

If you're tired enough, sleeping anywhere is remarkably easy. One of the best naps of my life was on sharp, matte black, lava rocks, at noon in the equatorial sun with no shade other than a plant about a foot high I managed to get my head sort of shaded by. (That was not a well-planned hike.)

170: "A three-hour hike, a three-hour hike."