Welcome Back, Ferber

We started sleep training Savannah last night.

She's a good sleeper, but had some picky habits about how she would fall asleep. Like only with a pacifier. While being held. And rocked. And patted. For half an hour. Or maybe more.

It was wearing us out. And because she's already a little mama's girl, her falling asleep issues were making it really difficult for me to get any time away. (And you know I need my time away.)

With Chelsea, sleep training was salvation and sanity. Before training, all three of us would be in tears every night, trying to get her to bed over and over again, never knowing when the night would be over.

When we finally did it, she cried for 90 minutes the first night. Every minute of which was sheer torture for me. I had to distract myself with TV, painting my toenails, and reading motivational note cards (don't laugh! I needed them!) all at once.

I have come full circle now that I'm writing about sleep training on my own blog, because it was during Chelsea's middle-of-the-night crying jags when I first discovered blogs. I was up one night Googling something like "baby doesn't sleep" and came upon an old post on dooce. When I first read it, I didn't even understand what it was. An ad? An article of some sort? Chelsea had plenty of sleepless nights, giving me enough time to explore dooce's archives and finally figure out what a blog was.

It was an eternity before Chelsea went to sleep without tears. Anything and everything would trigger a setback and require us to start up training all over again: travel, recovering from an illness, switching to a big girl bed. Now I just count her among the ranks of most kids whose bedtime refrain is always, "But I'm not tired!"

Savannah took an hour to get to sleep last night. And then she slept FOR NINE GLORIOUS HOURS. She woke up wiggly and happy and smiley. And what did I use to distract myself from her crying? A blog, of course.

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The Hothouse

I recently finished reading A Nation of Wimps: The High Cost of Invasive Parenting by Hara Estroff Marano. Marano explores the current upswing in "helicopter parenting" and its many damaging effects on children, parents, and our society.

Some of the effects on the "over-parented" children are obvious: kids whose parents shelter them in the extreme grow into adults who lack all sorts of emotional and practical skills. Some effects are less obvious, but equally harmful: anxious parents deprive their children of adequate play time, opting instead for Little League or Italian classes or even just staying at home, safe from imagined hazards.

Marano explains how easy it is for parents to fall into this trap. When we wait longer to have children and have fewer of them, they become overly precious to us. Those who over-parent do so with only the best intentions: to protect their children from danger, to provide their children with opportunities.

In the end, these parents create stunted, damaged adults. Adults who overburden university counseling centers. Adults who fail their frustrated employers.

I do not believe I am a "hothouse" parent. Marano cites an example of a mother of a 4-year-old who had never been away from the child for more than a couple of hours. I sent my 2.5-year-old to California for a week! And was happy for the break!

But I can understand how easy it is to let your child become your life. Especially when that child is your first. Especially when you stay at home with that child.

Marano writes about parents being hyper-concerned with their OWN children and uninterested in children in general. She warns that instead of working to create unfair advantages for our kids, we should try to improve conditions for all kids.

Is this blog a reflection of my own selfish obsession with my children? Look at me! Look at my kids! Aren't they smart/cute/hilarious?

Or is it my attempt to hold on to some semblance of my adult self? To have a place where I can focus on things that I like. A place where I can be a parent, yes, but also a wife, a daughter, a reader, a writer. To avoid becoming a helicopter/hothouse/snowplow parent. To have a life outside of my children.

The latter. Please let it be the latter.