'Me time'

LizG; your previous comment about keeping the child as a baby has hit the nail on the head [taken in the context of the whole article]. She wanted to 'enjoy' the early years of one of her children, so had another child so as to do so, but has tried to keep the poor little girl as a baby..until she's got fed up with it. Quite scary stuff imo.

None of what I wrote was directed at an individual. Nor was any of uncivil. It is just straighforward facts expressed, I have to admit, in a somewhat impatient way because several people commented on the nappy thing even though it was quite clear from the article that the child was out of nappies except at night.

It cannot be news to anyone that some children wet the bed well beyond the age when most stop night-time wetting.

I was horrified by this article. How could a mum put such a picture of her wee girl in the paper? That article will be around on the world wide web forever. It is no longer just tomorrow's fish and chip paper. Of course if mum needs to work she could find a lovely childminder who will give her little girl some care and attention but surely she could find something other than her daughter to write about.

I don't agree that she has kept the child a baby. The child seems like a normal four year old to me.

I don't agree that the mother has kept the child a baby eithe, but you haven't said whether you think the posed photos are acceptable, thatbags - sad face in the first one, dummy in the second one...

Not in the context of the nightime nappies but perhaps in other ways. Children only become dry at night when their bodies are capable of being so [unless there's an emotional problem of some kind]. Thought one of my grandchildren would never come out of nappies at night, whereas the other one was just dry without anyone doing anything at all; nappies were just bone dry every morning.

I think they are carefully posed photographs, that the photographer has taken multiple shots of the child looking everything from delighted to bored and everything in between, and then that the photographer has chosen the what s/he regards as the most emotive pics for the article.

I think that in the one of the mother and child the mother is having to arrange her face carefully so as not to smile.

I suspect that the child does not use her dummy very often during the day but, even if she does, so what? What surprises me in some of the reactions to the article is that anyone is surprised by the picture of a just four year old with a dummy in its mouth, as if childhood dummy-sucking were the absolute pit of disgustingness. This, to me, shows a lot of prejudice against children and a lot of unreasonable adult expectations of What Children Of Four Years Old Should Be Like.

In short, a lot of the comments are too judgmental for my taste.

So yes, those pics are acceptable. What's wrong with them? They illustrate the very contrived article (I hesitate to call it journalism) very well.

I wouldn't (and didn't) do what this mother has done.

And tegan is right about the development, or otherwise, of night-time bladder control. That's something else not to be judgmental about.

Hear! Hear!

I've been trying to remember where I've seen Shona Sibary. She's the woman that gets wheeled out on daytime tv to give opposing views on Katie Hopkins' barmy pronouncements, the latest of which was that it's ok to miss your child's birthday if you're busy working. Given Ms Sibary's current assertion that she's happy to rush her child into school for some 'me' time, I wonder why she was recently so adamant that her sensitive little chicks need her to be there for them so they can celebrate their special days throughout the year, and why did she accuse Ms Hopkins of making her children feel unimportant because she put work first?

Strikes me that Shona Sibary is just another attention-seeking media bod who will say anything to get herself back on TV for a fat fee, to explain herself. What's the betting she'll be on This Morning any day soon? Waste of space!

GN not at it's best when being judgemental.

Well said, when. But why is anyone ever surprised by such rubbish in the DM?

I'm not at all 'disgusted' by the idea of a child of 4 sucking a dummy, when! I'm just not impressed by the cynical choice of photos for the DM article. The photo itself is obviously supposed to invoke sympathy, not disgust - no one on here has expressed such a view, have they?

My son wet the bed until he was well into his teens. He eventually grew out of it, but I don't think I would ever have mentioned it in a national newspaper.

Surely leaving the child in a good nursery for a year would have given the mother some free time and got the child better prepared for school. I remember school came as a terrible shock to me (no preschools in those days) and I became one of the quiet and withdrawn children, barely able to function. Although I eventually got used to it there are still ways in which I feel the effects over 60 years later.

OK sympathy. Scratch out disgustingness. But why sympathy? Sympathy for being a four year old doing things typical of four year olds like thumb- or dummy-sucking and going to kindergarten (because that's what it is even if it's called school) and sometimes weeing in one's sleep?

It's the mother who's fishing, in a confused way, for sympathy. The child is fine.

I'm not impressed with the cynical choice of photographs either.

Well... Actually, I am. I impressed with the boldness of the overt cynicism of the DM in publishing such articles so as to get more sales. One can be impressed by pure brashness, can't one?

I meant that the DM was going for sympathy for the child from its readers. Perhaps rather at odds with the writer's aim, but there you go...

The mother is pretty "impressive" too in her way. In the way when has highlighted.

Ana did you mean someone else? I haven't said anything relating to disgust about a child with a dummy?

It was one of my posts that mentioned disgustingness, when. Rightly or wrongly, I thought I perceived disgust at a four year old (still! shock, horror!) sucking a dummy (one has to admit, there is such a thing as dummy-disgust), and I also perceived disapproval (which could be called a mile kind of disgust) about the night time nappies. It annoyed me.

mild, not mile

Perhaps I was wrong to perceive such things in some of the comments, but I did. We all know how easy it is to misinterpret the printed word.

I'm so sorry, when - yes I mistakenly attributed the comment about disgust to you, not thatbags.

I think a lot of us are perceiving the article and/or photos differently from each other, and misunderstandings are happening.

Reckon that's what the article set out to do.