Let it be.
When Dr. Sears & all the rest have got you down, this looks like a promising antidote.
The Telegraph, Idle parenting means happy children:
“There is a way out of this over-zealous parenting trap, a simple solution that will make your life easier and cheaper. It will make your kids’ lives more enjoyable and also will help to produce happy, self-sufficient children, who can create their own lives without depending on a Mummy substitute. I call it idle parenting and our mantra is: ‘Leave them alone.’ “
(snip)
I will confess my many parenting errors. I am a disaster-prone, chaotic layabout and so should warn you not to listen to my advice. Certainly my friends say the idea of me advising other parents on childcare is absurd.
With that caveat in mind, let us go forth, throw away the rule books, forget what other people think and enjoy family life and all its joys and woes.
My approach to bedtime increasingly resembles this approach. I secretly suspect that the moment I really no longer care when he goes to bed or if he puts himself to sleep by shouting and singing loudly for 2 hours will be the moment that he starts falling asleep in 15 minutes.
Coversation at bedtime tonight, as I’m leaving the room to let Zag work out his squirming/kicking/thrashing/singing thing out on his own for a little while:
Zag: Don’t go!
Me: I’ll come back when you’re ready to stop fighting with me and you’re ready to try and go to sleep. I don’t want to lie in here and fight with you about going to sleep.
Zag (with a slight hint of incredulousness): You don’t want to fight with me?
Me: No.
Zag: Why not?
Me: I don’t like fighting.
Zag (really incredulous now): You don’t like fighting?
Me: No.
Zag: I like fighting!
Me: Yes, I had noticed.
April 23rd, 2008 at 2:31 pm
That article is REALLY interesting!! I read the whole thing – it made me laugh. Made me want to aim “low”
Thanks for sharing it!! I can totally imagine Zag’s incredulousness.