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Alberta Health Services - Only One Way to Parent?

Posted May 15, 2012

Families deserve choices. Too often bureaucratic policies  based on a "one-size fits all" model dictates the advice handed out to new parents in Alberta. This isn't fair to new parents, particularly first-timers.  New parents are at their most vulnerable time, often well instructed on birthing options, but woefully unprepared for the pressures that lie ahead.

Parents frequently report the following:  mom may have just fallen asleep a few hours after giving birth, when suddenly a nurse enters the room, announces that it's time to start breastfeeding, and "shoves" (direct quote) the mother's breast into the baby's mouth.  Lots of instructions follow, and while many nurses are gentle and respectful - many are not!  Tears, confusion, screaming baby (who may have also been sleeping peacefully before this began) and suddenly -- two parents on a quick learning curve, finding out they are not in charge any more. 

The weigh-in at the health clinic is another often worrisome experience for new parents.  Naturally, nurses are charting the baby's ability to gain weight.  But the degree of alarm raised (perhaps inadvertently) by a nurse who may not be as gentle in her reactions as she should, can send parents into scary place, where 'feeding failure' lands like a brick on their shaky self-esteem.

 

Instead, parents need to be informed during their prenatal class and in the hospital and in postnatal classes -- that how a baby is fed has no bearing on the growth of a secure attachment.  There should be clear information on breastfeeding and it's advantages as well as information on formula feeding as a clear, safe option.  There should be more stress on how a secure attachment should centre on both parents, and not just the mother, and has nothing to do with where the baby sleeps. 

Attachment Parenting (AP) is just one possible choice of many styles of parenting.  Sleep is enormously important and babies and parents should be taught strategies for good sleep from the start, no matter the style. 

Many physicians do a very good job of reminding parents that it is OK for a baby to cry when all has been done that can be.  However, very often the Alberta Health Services front line personnell do not.  Parents are warned that letting a baby cry may harm the attachment process.  This is not true and the stats on  shaken baby syndrome have risen since this advice became the 'popular word.'  Parents are often made to feel like bad parents if they allow their baby time to cry, so they do everything they can to STOP the crying, perhaps with catastrophic results.

In Calgary, Alberta, and Canada, what is needed is for the directives to end and for the information given out be more accurate and less determined by the breastfeeding and AP lobby's agendas.  When this has been raised before the answer is always "Parents can let us know if this is not going well for them, using our complaint forms, and we do not hear from them." 

Next time you are in your Dr.'s office or you public health clinic, be ready to speak up on paper --about what you appreciate, and...what you don't.

 

Look What's Coming!

JUNE 2012

June 5 Sleep from Now On

June 7 Sleep from the Start

June 12 Toilet Learning the Easy Way

JULY - no classes or Telephone Appointments

AUGUST 2012

Aug. 9 Sleep from the Start

August 14 Sleep from Now On

August 21 Toilet Learning the Easy Way

August 28 Setting Healthy Limits

SEPTEMBER 2012

September 6 Sleep from the Start

September 11 Sleep from Now On

 

Telephone Counseling Appointments (all questions,  every seminar cov ered!)

Dates: May 29, June 4, 6, August 6, 8, 13, 15, 20, 22, 27 and 29.  Wow, let's talk!

 

Oh, and check out Kitty's  new videos (summary of seminars)!!

 

All registration taken at http://www.raymondparenting.com

 

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To Poop? Or Not To Poop?

Posted March 26, 2012

The Danger of Early Toilet Training is a recent article adapted from a the new book It's No Accident: Breakthrough Solutions to Your Child's Wetting, Constipation, UTIs, and Other Potty Problems. by Dr. Steve Hodges who is a pediatric urologist at Wake Forest University.

In his writing, Dr. Hodges makes this bold statement: "Children need years of uninhibited voiding to allow for maximum bladder growth, and if they train before age 3, they are more likely than older kids to develop the habit of holding pee, poop or both." 

Wait! does that mean parents should not engage in toilet training until their child has turned 3?

Absolutely!

 

If you've already attended Toilet Learning the Easy Way at Raymond Parenting in Calgary, the idea of not 'training' until after age 3 will be familiar to you. What will be new even to past attendees are the substantiated warnings and research to back up this timing.  I had no idea so many children suffer from blockage of the rectum by stool - yet, still have a bowel movement every day.  Children can be constipated -long term - without the parents and sometimes doctors - realizing it.  Hodges recommends a diagnostic x-ray of the child's abdomin as a non-invasive diagnostic tool to be used unexplained symptoms like bed-wetting or starting to be wet in the day after what looked like successful toilet training. 

He believes that babies and toddlers need 3 years of practice in being aware of the body's urges to pee and deficate freely into a diaper, before any effort is made to time these urges or control them or hang on to the pee or poo until the child reaches the potty, etc. It's surprising how little it takes before a young child begins to hold pee or poo to avoid having to stop playing and run to the bathroom.  It is this 'witholding' process that can result in a bladder thickened with unwanted muscle (and therefore able to hold less pee) or a rectum in which stool accumulates and eventually spoils all possibility of sensation to eliminate.

Even if your child walks into the bathroom ag age two and says "I'm ready!", I want you to read this article first, just so you'll know how to best respond.  Obviously, we won't advocate banning your curious toddler from the bathroom...but there is a difference between a parent watching, waiting and wondering compared to getting a program going quickly, believing this may be a "window of opportunity." 

What are your thoughts on this provocative article and book to follow?

 

The more adept (ha!) I become at social networking, the more interesting stuff I'm posting on Raymond Parenting News If you haven't been there yet and 'liked' the page, you are missing some personal and parenting ideas I've found to be fascinating.

 

Sleep from the Start Thursday April 5, 2012

Sleep from Now On  Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Setting Healthy Limits (Discipline) Tuesday, April 17, 2012

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Do the French Have Parenting Secrets?

Posted March 19, 2012

I'm listening to an interview on The Current with Pamela Druckerman, author of Bringing Up Bebe'.  Perfect timing because I'm on page 51 of her book.  Toddlers eating vegetables willingly?  Going to bed cooperatively?  Infants sleeping through the night at one month?  I'ts only fair that WE learn some of these secrets!

Parents more at ease.  Children sitting calmly through long meals, still engaging with parents, chatty, happy.  Study out of Princeton, compared French and American mothers:  French parents like parenting more than North American mothers. (A generalization of course.  I don't have this study yet to see how specific the conclusions were.)

Drukerman has three children and lives in France.  Her roots in the United States cause her to move frequently back and forth between what she finds to be two very different parenting styles.

Here are her overarching impressions, as I heard them in the CBC interview:  (I haven't finished the book yet.)

Life should not center entirely around kids; maintain a life of your own; better for parents, better for kids not to be solely focussed on.  French parents pretty much share the same kinds of parenting beliefs so there are not the parenting wars we have here. There is general agreement on "rules" of parenting. 

Kids eat what they want but they have to taste everything. (Kitty's note: this may work better early on, say 5-6 months when babies are most curious about what parents are eating, and then continue) 

Drukerman observes that North American parents are parenting in ways different from how they were raised. Grandparents are also reading the book and saying "This is what we used to do!"

In early childhood, there is less emphasis on learning skills or academics; instead they stress emotional connections.  Very big on manners.  French parents say that saying bon jour makes kids realize there are other people in the world.

At bedtime, you must stay in your room but inside your room you can do anything you want. There are fewer bedtime battles in France.

Kids are happy and wild in French playgrounds, but she obverved less playground screaming and fewer kids running to their parents.  Tantrums in markets, are rare. 

The French feel kids should be able to play by themselves and handle their own boredome, in order to be happy.  The author wondered why aren't the parents more involved, don't their kids need stimulation like we are told here?  No, say French parents - they will find stimulation.   Allow children to be absorbed, and not interrupted.  Mothers get time to themselves, and so do kids. 

Here mothers feel guilty when taking time for oneself.  French mothers feel guilty, but handle it differently.  American mothers appear to embrace guilt like a cape, according to the author.

 French moms go sit on the bench for 30 minutes while kids go on the merry go round .  American moms stand nearby in order to wave every time the child comes around.

Pregnancy in France is not, of course, unsafe, but they signal good motherhood by how calm they are, and by not renouncing pleasure.  Allow themselves pleasures all along.

Pregnancy here: we have to show how meticulously we eat, careful about our bodies, vigilant, worried. "Is parmesan cheese pasturized?"

French babies "do their nights" (sleep through the night) much earlier.  By believing baby is a person, French parents believe you can teach him certain things, e.g. how to sleep.  Gently, slowly. "La Pause"  represents a French style where parents of a baby 2-3 weeks old - do not rush to pick him up.  They watch, wait.  Can baby connect his 2-hour sleep cycles on his own?  Yes! Then they "pause" while a baby moves to 4-hour segments.   They are really anxious to let the baby learn to go the night.  French babies are not being fed through the night after the first 2-3 months. By four months of age, French parents believe you may have "missed a window" for showing your baby how to sleep through the night without eating or fussing.   At that age, then they resort to letting the baby cry until it falls asleep.

French  families eat together.  Serve food in courses, starting with vegetable dish.  No snacks in the afternoon so their families are actually hungry by the time the salad or veg. dish arrives.  Then the main, different cheese every day, ending meal with fresh fruit dessert. 

Lots of social support among parents for other parents. Much less judgement.

French fathers do less than American fathers do, but much less a battle of the sexes, complaining.  No boiling rage beneath the surface resentment in France.  In North America, she says,  we expect 50/50 and and seldom does that happen; it doesn't in France either, but nobody expects it, so there is much less anger.

Can we do what French parents do the author wonders?  She is advised to teach children how to wait, from babyhood on.  Learning to wait well is a skill, learning to sleep well, learning to eat well, they teach their children to cope with frustration.   The belief is that parents don't need to do everything the child wants.

Pamela Drukerman tells us that her kids enjoy food, bedtime is bedtime, evenings are adult times. Still, she wonders if they are sometimes too strict. (Kitty's note:  let's call it unquestioned leadership...yay!)

This is a book I'm going to enjoy.

 

THIS WEEK'S SEMINARS:

Tuesday, March 20 Toilet Learning the Easy Way 7-9 PM

Tuesday, March 27 Helping Your Child Learn to Play Independently  7-9 PM.  (Sounds quite in keeping with French parenting practices)

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