I do not believe that spanking is the first choice in discipline. I do believe that it may be an option in some situations. Personally, I start with positive discipline tactics and then work my way down a list of options.

I do babywear and breastfeed on demand, my point was that it is not the panacea that some would have you believe.

I’m just a little jaded with the whole “my way is better than yours” epidemic.

I absolutely would report abuse if I saw it. I ask for advice when I need it, but I also feel free to ignore it when I feel it is coming from a hypocrite.

Does that make sense?

E-mailed because the post is scooching down the list. =)

And therein lies the crux of the problem. I fell for the pretty picture; I know my mom had a hard time with us and like every new mom wanted to do it ‘right.’ Well the picture that some of these women paint is absolutely absurd compared to reality. I like to think of myself as a rational, even logical adult, but I honestly thought I was doing something wrong with Aidan. There were a lot of nights I thought there was something wrong with him.

Everywhere I turned for advice it was the same, just breastfeed on demand and wear the baby. Well, I can tell you how well that worked out. Of course if I asked about other alternatives I was told how cruel it would be to EVER let the child cry without being held, how he would be emotionally damaged. Nevermind for centuries women have HAD to put the baby down for much longer periods of time than it now takes us to cook dinner, but I was being brainwashed. I was miserable and the baby was miserable.

It was at that point that the whole online AP ideal lost a lot of credibility in my eyes. I want people to know that yes, breastfeeding on demand and wearing your baby MAY help, but it might also be just as useless as everything else you tried, too. It’s OK to put the baby down and go outside for a few minutes, the world won’t come down and even if your kid turns out to be a weirdo, it won’t be because of that.

Once I realized that the AP thing was wrong for us in one area, it made sense that while I might agree with a lot of the ideals they are just that. We will survive each other and I’ll do my best to not be a banshee or a pushover. We’ll find our way.

I don’t see much of the mainstream media as we don’t watch television and I’m too cheap to pay for more than a couple magazine subscriptions. In my experience, most of the anxiety has been caused by pressure from other parents. Before we moved to South Carolina I didn’t really know any parents, in real life. I knew lots of parents online and the cattiness and finger pointing was unbelievable.

I joined a mothers’ group once we got settled and my perspective changed almost immediately. These women are from many walks of life and are real parents. Unlike the online community, I could witness their real interactions and frustrations. My what a different picture is painted on the Web.

Now that I’ve spent a lot of time with other parents, I am becoming grounded and have developed more trust in my own parenting skills. I’ve seen moms who firmly believe in positive disclipine lose their temper and it made me feel better about my own parenting foibles. Not that I was gleeful over a perceived failure, but rather it became oh so clear that I’d been reading a lot of stories based on how women thought it should be rather than how the situation actually presented itself.