I second that, Bath! Definitely easier on everyone all round if you go the gentle road. Gotta spread love, though...
Being a hard ar$e takes energy, creates stress and stomps on your instincts. Not worth the hassle.
It's harder in terms of putting up with people's ignorant comments about rods for backs (like you, Cai! Also, I would regard a time schedule as more of a rod...what if you want to go out???), dumb things people say about co-sleeping (oh, not to mention the looks you get from them...if I said out loud what I think of separated sleeping I'd be called rude - and my ideas are backed by research - so what makes it ok the other way around?), and being given looks that imply "why aren't you just letting the child cry/giving him a smack/using 'time out' (ugh!)/yelling at him?"...and then you look at your child and realise that's it's not so hard to put up with that dumbness when you've got living proof that gentle parenting produces wonderful, secure and engaging kids. Not to say that kids who have experienced CC aren't all those things, they just (in my experience) can't be generalised as having those characteristics. Every child I know who is gentle parented has something about them - some call it defiance, I call it mutual respect.
I've been thinking about something in the last couple of days, in relation to a friend of ours whose husband does hard ar$e. I'm thinking of some way to get through to him without directly addressing the issue. I thought of this:
Respect, discipline and trust work on a demerit system. When our kids are born and just little, they automatically look to us for protection (this is evolutionary instinct in any mammal). We have their respect for our experience and ability to protect. There is no 'the kid needs to learn to respect me'...we start out with full respect. So, when kids show disrespect, something has gone awry in the parenting cycle - we've eroded a fundamental trust and respect. Every time we pretend that kids are subhuman and undeserving of the attention and consideration for feelings we afford to adults (well, most of us...I think), we lose points. Kids may not have the reasoning and sense of consequence that we have as adults, but they still have these senses - they are being shaped and molded every minute they're awake. Their reasoning is not flawed, it is based on the best information they have at the time, the best that their inexperienced brains can do with that information.
So, since I decided that I am working on the premise of a demerit system (a few days ago) I am even more careful with how I treat Oscar and how I treat his often 'inconvenient' actions.
But this is all just putting words to instinct - instinct serves a real purpose and if the warning bells are going off (like when you speak to a health professional)...LISTEN
BTW: I used an Ergo sling for DS to get him to sleep until recently - he's got to be near on 12 kg if not over (oops, haven't been to the maternal nurse since the 12 month check!). By the end of it, I was waiting till he was REALLY tired before putting him in, so he'd only be in for no more than 10 minutes before nodding off, cos it was getting too hard on my pelvis (I have SPD) to carry him or fight with him (he'd arch and wriggle) for any longer than necessary. Now he can go to sleep with just someone lying next to him (in our bed), often whilst attached to boob.
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