Watching a programme on Channel Five right now and the people in it are weird to say the least. They are practising Attachment Parenting, where a lot of them are just 100% devoting all their time to parenting their children. Giving up work, breastfeeding on demand till whatever age the child wants to stop, home-schooling, never giving out to their children; using persuasion only, not using prams or cots; constantly carrying their children and even practising something called Elimination Communication where they never use nappies and let the kids just poop and pee everywhere.
Sorry but that's just plain weird, as well as ultimately being extremely unfair on the children. They will get some shock when they go out into the real world and realise that it doesn't actually revolve around them, the way that their parents have lead them to believe!
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11 comments:
I was torn between this and the 34 Stone Teenager on BB3. I think Attachment Parenting would have left me sleepless and thinking "Bitty"...
aha, thought i was de only one watching. laughed me tits off & informed hubby dat de cage cot & nappies are out de window when babs no.3 arrives!!!!NOT!! as mother of two(and another en-route)thought the whole thing was a scream,particularly de pee & poop fest-not to mention giving "bitty" to a 5yr old(AND yes i did get me tits out and feed my own and will do again, but de english wan on de show was like a prize dairy cow @ a show - baps out at de drop of a nursing bra- who says dere dumbing down t.v. huh????
lol...I think yummymummy's comment sums it all up! Just plain nuts!
CAT: I'd seen the one about the 34 stone teenager already so ended up watching what I would call "how not to parent"!
YUMMYMUMMY: How right you are, I know someone in exactly the same position as you! Maybe you'll decide to do attachment parenting on babs no.3 LOL
MISE: Nuts is another good way to sum it all up - certainly not how I would parent, should I ever become a mother!
What the F***? Do these people actually want to teach their kids manners and consideration, or are they actually aiming to produce whole litter of selfish, inconsiderate w******? Pippa
I intend to throw my child out of the house as soon as she's old enough to work for a living.
Next Tuesday, I think.
Pippa: I know, these kids will believe the world owes them, madness.
SwearingLady: Tuesday might be a little late, at least start her on a work day, what about Monday?
LOL I have a different view and have to say it. I don't do any of what they do .... except the home edding bit .... and I find it strange but the more I listen to their actual reasoning then there are some good ideas and it isn't so horrific.
We have to allow that the programme makers needed to sensationalise the subject and that is what we see but on the whole I think the programme makers didn't do such a hatchet job on them (when they could have done worse) so that is progress.
Doris: Everyone is entitled to raise their children as they see fit and whilst the programme makers didn't do a complete hatchet job on the parents, their outlook did come across as quite out there and removed from the world their children will one day have to enter. It was the extremity of their parenting that shocked me. Even the best parent in the world needs a life of their own, away from their children and those parents were revolving their lives 110% around their children, which in my opinion is not healthy.
I always felt that the objective of programs like attachment parenting was the chain the woman to the home (seems always to be the women staying at home doing the elimination non-potty training, from what I can see).
I think it's unfair in a lot of fronts. It's manipulation of the highest order and again, I'm not sure how much the children benefit from it. I've the impression (cue proof that I@m getting old coming up) that children today seem to lack a framework for behaviour, a set of rules - because they seem to get what they want when they want and the world revolves around them. I also think that something like this, in addition to chaining a parent to the child's side at all times, is a way of abdicating certain responsibilities. I'm not suggesting kids need to be sent up the chimneys when they get to the age of 5 or anything like that, but they do need to learn their place in the world, and all the cosseting in the world will not really do that.
But ironically, I would probably home school my kids because I'm not altogether convinced that the school system as it stands is intellectually stimulating enough.
Some double standards, I fear, or a slave-driver mummy. Maybe it's just as well I don't have any.
I too wonder about the 110% bondage between parent and child. In fact I know someone who has done just that and the child is now 7 years old. They are both more than happy and the mother's marriage survives despite the fact that mother does not go anywhere without the child and obviously vice versa.
Not sure I could do that ever.
On the other hand, could it be that those children are less psychologically damaged adults because they have had their fill of "attachment parenting" in their own time without any need to actually rebel or go off the rails? There is a comedian who has as one of the acts a woman breast feeding her grown adult son in front of his fiancee but I think it wouldn't go as far as that but that is what we fear when we think of this attachment parenting.
Would be very interesting to do a follow-up in five years time. And I may know in time what happens to my friend's daughter.
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