Do you use a Baby forum

[*Snowdrop* 604]

I think this is the judgemental things that keep most people off of parenting boards. My daughter screams about a lot. If I didn't have her do anything anytime she screamed bloody murder, she would watch Netflix all day on my laptop, eat cookies, and still be using a diaper at 4. At 3 and a quarter I had enough, held her on the toilet every time until she used it - she screamed and wailed and you'd think I was abusing her. Same with the swimming - she screams and wails, but after 30 minutes she is fine and other days she'll jump right in.

Parents have to make choices over whether to allow their children to run away from new things and their fears or to confront them. As a parent, it is respectful of me to determine on my own what are valid 'fears' to be avoided (the big scary playscape at the mall with wild 8 year old ruffians or the Danish and Indian kids who endlessly assaulted and bullied her at her old school ) and which are to be confronted in order to gain valuable life and life-saving skills (swimming).

Parents have been parenting for millennia without guide books or scientific research. Do what feels right and what you think is right by your child and they will turn out just fine.

You just said yourself that sometimes she jumps right in and sometimes she screams for a little while and then is okay. But if week after week your 9-month-old was only crying and screaming, vomiting because of crying so hard at a swim class - wouldn't you back off and then perhaps try again another time.

I have a toddler who also screams and cries when she doesn't want to do some things. And I believe in setting boundaries - it's an essential part of parenting. I certainly believe that most parents are the best judge of what is right and when for their own child. But I believe you can respect your child as an individual and also help them to learn all the things they need to without pushing them beyond what they are physically or emotionally ready for.

My daughter is potty trained at 2.5-years-old - and it was an interesting process of showing her the potty and the toilet, explaining what we were aiming for etc. A slow process that began when she was two and let her set the pace. I was prepared for it to take a lot longer - with girls you have to be careful not to push potty training until they understand not to 'hold it in' for too long as that can set them up for UTIs down the road. Your time frame sounds great in terms of that.

Lol Vanessa, potty training probably wasn't what you were thinking of when you started this thread - you'll find on the baby forums that these debates go round and round - worse than the immigration forums! - as many parenting views as there are children, perhaps more.

[Ontarkie 14,567]

Offensive post removed, do not post anything like that again.

[TBoneTX 46,311]

I've been asked by PM and want to point out to others that if you want the best information on early child developent, you won't find it with google in the dumbed-down popular literature or discussion boards.

Scientists produce journals that you either have to pay for a subscription for, or belong to a University as a professor or student. It is hard to even search for abstracts on google. A lot of universities will let the public log on to their library computers though, and use the electronic journal access for free.

So you can then e-mail articles to your home computer from a University library. Now you are in command of research material written by the top scientists in the world that run hundreds of infants at a time through these experiments in walking, swimming, obstacle courses, biking, reading, writing, etc.

I'm a retired professor so I do this for everything I am interested in. It puts you on the leading edge of science and it will be hard to even communicate with people reading popular literature. They don't even know what a peer-reviewed science journal is. It takes more work, yes, and the vocabulary is more difficult, and it helps a great deal to have had university level statistics courses. But if you want the best science instead of Reader's Digest level piffle, that's what you do.

Along this line, if you know a journal's name, an author's name, or the title of a paper that you see written about in the daily newspaper, go here to type it in:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/citmatch

You can then at least read Abstracts (opening summaries) of most articles. Sometimes (not often enough, sadly), you'll see a link about "free full content" for you to click on.

Go into the space for article title and type "Child Care" or "Infant Learning" just to see how many articles come up, see man.

[Xanax 349]

I would never use any of those sites for information. I use them just for chatting about pregnancy etc.

I didn't like "what to expect...". We have read numerous texts but I found "heading home with your newborn from birth to reality" a good read. Any OB worth anything will send you home with many recommended texts, brochures, leaflets, pamphlets, lists and general information you will gather from the lists of questions you will undoubtably present them.

Regardless of how much you read, how you believe you will parent or what you envision I am sure it won't end up like that so take anything you read etc with a grain of salt.