Flashback
When I was 16 or so I went babysitting one night with a friend at whose house I was staying. She regularly babysat for this family of three kids, who were, say, 6, 4, and a baby of about 18 months.
The baby screamed in her crib for three hours every night before falling asleep. Every night, for years, reportedly. We sat there and listened to her that evening, and I seem to remember being a bit uncomfortable with it, but my friend told me that this was normal and there was nothing anyone could do about it, so we just had to ignore it.
I still feel terrible for that little girl, from time to time, even now. She's perfectly fine: I met her years later at somebody's 21st birthday party, where she was a beautiful 18-year-old.
But you would think, wouldn't you, that they would have tried something else? That if your baby screams at the top of her lungs for three hours night after night, this method of putting her to bed is clearly Not Working? That you might go and lie down with her for a few minutes? Or change something else? Can it really be true that, for a family with three kids and two busy parents in Ireland in 1990 or so, if your kid didn't sleep when you put her to bed, listening to her scream was the only option? Is gentle parenting that new an invention? I don't think so.
posted by Maud @ 12:11 PM
2 Comments
2 Comments:
I once got fired from a babysitting gig, because I sat with the baby while she went to sleep - she was maybe 12-15 months old. Her older siblings, who spent the whole 15 minutes it took quietly playing in their room, ratted me out to the mother, who had told me to leave her to cry and that it might take 2 hours. Even as a teenager, I just couldn't do it.
Actually, my maths are way off here somewhere: she can't have been 18 at the party unless I was 12 at the original event, which I wasn't. Please take all ages and dates as approximate.
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