Things I Swore I'd Never Do

The kiddos are watching a color-changing nightlight, so let's see if I can hammer this out before they get bored with it.

Okay, those-without-children, are there parenting practices you've promised yourself you'd never do? And, those-with-children, did you HAVE things you'd promised yourself you would never do, but you do them?

Here's my list:

Counting

When I saw parents do The Count I always snorted, mostly internally, and I swore I'd never count to my kids.

Well, we count. BUT! We don't do this count: "Okay, Johnny, you come here right now. I'm going to count! One, two... No, okay, I'm serious, come here! If you don't come here by three you're going to be in trouble. One, two, two-and-a-half... Johnny! Come here now!" Ugh.

But, like I said previously, we do count. BuggaBoo has a hard time transitioning. Seriously, what toddler doesn't. So we count to give him a concrete time to be done. Baths, nursing, playing with friends, it works for a lot of scenarios. It's become a useful tool for us.

Not Spank

I used to be all about the spanking. I was spanked, I'm fine, it's how you control kids. Well, we've changed about this, too.

Our personal philosophy is we try to teach our kids to not hit other people, even when angry, even if the other person did something wrong. We teach them to use conversation skills instead, and if that fails then get a grownup to mediate.

So, in our opinion, if we were to spank it would send the message to our children, "You don't hit, but if you're bigger, or in control, or angry, or didn't like what the other person did, or if you tell them you're going to hit them, that's okay."

Also, me coming from an abusive background I've noticed that allowing myself the opportunity to use physical punishment for discipline can be a slippery slope to adult temper tantrums. So for myself it doesn't work.

Co-Sleeping and Cry-It-Out

I was adamant our babies would sleep by themselves, all the way until halfway through my pregnancy with BuggaBoo. Then I read "Our Babies, Ourselves" by Meredith F. Small. Talk about a complete paradigm shift for me. In this anthropologically based book Small talks about the need babies have for primitive parenting. So, we changed our minds about that.

We also realized that excessive crying, especially cry-it-out, was not how babies were programmed to work. So we (try) to comfort every cry. As our children get older we do realize the differences between cries, such as pain, hunger, frustration, anger, etc. With our older children we respond differently to different cries, but when they're young each cry is attended to.

Extended Breastfeeding

I always knew I would breastfeed my babies to a year, but no longer than that! It was weird, unnerving, sexually wrong, and just plain spoiling them. Then I read "Our Babies, Ourselves" and decided that extended breastfeeding would be okay, but only until about age two.

BuggaBoo will be three soon and he's still going strong. He certainly nurses as often as Doozer. And I'm okay with that. The Hubby and I have decided that he can nurse as long as he wants to. I understand that extended breastfeeding, or EB, is not for everyone. But it totally works for our family.

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So, sweet readers, what beliefs do you hold dear? Those with babies, did you change your mind at all? How has it impacted your life? Oh, and if you do things differently than us, that's totally fine. Every family is different and I have a firm faith that parents do what's best for their children and themselves. So polite debate is fine, but try to keep any comments out of the realm of rude.

Oh, and if you guys are wondering if the kidlets were entertained the whole time, think again. We've had a scuffle, a crying jag, and a little boy standing IN the toilet whilst trying to write this. But that's okay!