I got very cross yesterday

Last night I watched 'bringing up baby' on Channel 4. It is a social experiment looking at 3 different ways of child rearing. One from the 50's, 60's and then 70's. The way we did things flicked between the 60's and 70's methods and were both child centered and (in our opinions) quite sensible. The 50's method was BARBARIC.

Leaving two week old babies to cry, alone for 4 hours to force them into a routine is a cruel and unusual punishment for a small person who has only just got used to not being in the dark hearing mummy's heartbeat. The cruel bitch who was forcing the parents to continue with these methods is called Claire Verity who follows a guy called Truby King. We decided during the show that she was not a mother herself, whereas the other 2 mentors obviously were, and a quick look at the website confirms this.

Mr V and myself have only once forced a change on Little Pickle and that was sleep training to get her to fall asleep without holding one of our hands. It was two weeks of hell and I hated every hour of it but we knew she would get a better sleep routine once she had it sorted, and she did. The reason we did it was that I was about to start teaching from home and I needed to be able to guarentee I could start at 7.30. I'm sure if this hadn't hapenned she would have come to it on her own quite quickly afterwards, she was pretty much ready.

Anyway. Evil bitch woman (leaving babies in the garden for hours) aside it is a very interesting programme and I shall enjoy screaming at Ms Verity for the next few weeks.