So where are we? How is he doing? What exactly is going on in Max's world. He is simply turning from an infant into a baby. To explain this will take some doing and I am quite clear that this may be entirely inexplicable to anyone who is not a parent of Max but sure let me have a go.
Little Max used to have only himself to worry about. He used to enjoy a world of one where his every need was catered for like a high-roller in the most exclusive of Vegas Casinos. His routine was inviolate. His sleeping and waking carefully monitored, recorded and studied in forensic detail.
Things have changed for two very good reasons. The first is that he is now attending crèche and the second is that we discovered a lady named Hogg. Now sadly she is not with us any more but her whispering ways with children are. It turned out that we were falling into some of the accidental parenting traps. These are her words now but on reading one of her conversations about getting children to sleep, it seemed as if she had been spying on us.
Her approach was gentle, she didn't say we were bad parents for rocking our child to sleep, she didn't say we were neglectful of his intellectual needs if we played a bit of music to him. She just pointed out that there was an easier way for both him and us. Now Max is a great sleeper but he does disturb easily. He can start at the test noise and a couple of weeks ago began to give a bit of trouble going down and waking at 4am. So we had a go as Ms. Hogg's pick up put down technique. Bearing in mind that she had said that everything we were doing so far was just a little bit wrong, in the nicest possible way.
The pick up put down technique is sort of baby slight of hand. The idea is just to get him to sooth himself to sleep. That's fine. Put him down and he moans a bit and drifts off, but what if he doesn't. Rocking him to sleep is a prop. Feeding him to sleep is a prop, singing, noises, counting sheep, and certainly sleeping tablets are all props. The trouble with props is that the encourage dependence and reliance and next thing you know, your son is 25 and asks his girlfriend to rock him gently to sleep. So no props.
What one does is to pick up the crying child (any thing less than a cry should be ignored) and rub his back while shushing loudly. Shssh shssh until your lungs empty and you struggle for breath. When he has stopped crying you gently put him back into the cot. Then continue to shssh until he is restful. Pick him up if he cries again and repeat. If he doesn't make a sound when he is put down, the chances are he will be asleep in minutes. The only other trick seems to be that if he moves too much in your arms, you have to put him down. Pushing or kicking is not allowed in this system and is disencouraged through the put down. There would seem at first glance to be so many holes in this system to render it at best confusing and at worst useless, but it does work. How does little Max know he is being put down because he is quiet or because he is pushing and kicking. Well he does know - Ms. Hogg told me so. Why such praise, because it works. Max now puts himself to sleep and is doing better at sleeping in the crèche. Myself and Ciara get an easier time of it in the evenings and there is just a lot more happiness in the family unit!
It is certainly an advance on most of the baby book advice that is so vague as to be relevant to no one and every one. "Your baby is six months old, he should be able to clap his hands. This can happen any time from 3 mts until 24mts and may not happen at all don't worry. Your child will start to appreciate the difference between right and wrong - unless they are unless they are destined for a career in law or politics". You see? Useless.
This is because every child is so different as to need a baby book of their own. What a parent needs is a tool kit or a bag of tricks. We need list of techniques that are proven to work with at least 5% of the population, all listed and explained and cross referenced. We will try them all. Maybe they should be sorted on their popularity. That way the chances are success will be achieved by the law of averages. We don't want to know why something is happening or working. We just want to know how to fix it. Like the pick up put down technique. Let's survey a thousand parent s and see did they use a particular technique, and score the techniques by popularity. We just want to know that they work, not why. It's like raising one head end of the cot to help sleep during a cold. It works and helps the little fello breath easier because it keeps all the mucous where it sould be and not up in his nose and throat. We don't want to know the background, the studies, the medical references and explanations. At 4am with a screaming and snorting and sniffling child, we want to know to try it and if it doesn't work we will try what's on the next page. There is moneye in this! I think the title should be - "Did you try ...."
Well, that's the millions made!
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