Am I old fashioned with my opinios

Advice about bringing up children has been available for a very long time. When my daughter was born 36 years ago I bought Penelope Leach's book and it was full of all sorts of useful and practical information. I was sorry that I had given away my copy when the grandchildren came along.

Dr Hugh Jolly was my favourite

When one thinks of the advice to lie baby on their front one wonders if some of the advice given now is valid .Let baby cry is another , no cosleeping is now questionable ............ it is a minefield

You're right it is a minefield, aggie and I think we have a valuable role to play in encouraging today's young parents to sift through the barrage of information that comes their way rather accepting everything they read or hear at face value. But that doesn't include criticising them for trying to learn more about child development and discovering some new strategies to manage behaviour etc. Sometimes it can seem like old wisdom/common sense wrapped in shiny expensive packaging but it's always good to have a few new tricks up your sleeve with children, even if you're a seasoned aka exhausted granny!

It was like Dr Spock had moved in with us when our first son was born. He was always there for friendly advice. My mum was thousands of miles away.

Mr LD was posted to Jamaica and so DS was born there . There was so much 'good' advice we chose not to take, so we needed the good doc for some common sense.
He was of course later discredited. Hey Ho.

Like you my mum was miles away lully My children were spread out across a few years so I worked my way through Dr Spock, Penelope Leach, Hugh Jolly and read endless Mother and Baby mags over the years. I think I took the best bits out of it all and made up the rest with acquired wisdom from more experienced mums mixed it with my own intuition and commonsense so by the time I had no 5 I sort of knew what I was doing. Goodness knows how much of it was right but it was "good enough" and children seem to have forgiven me for any glaring errors!

I had the 'Hugh Jolly' parenting book 30 years ago when I had DD. My GP just laughed and said I would find my own ways to parent and I did.
My DD was 'everything resilient' , she was stroppy, disobedient and self willed however she has turned out well with a lovely daughter of her own.
Therefore I think a lot of advice these days should be taken with a pinch of salt.

Thank you all for taking the time to reply. Your comments were well received and I took on board all your opinions. I apologised to my daughter
for my comment ( I didn't use the term new age nonsense when I made the comment to her).
We have a lovely understanding relationship but I do have a tendency to make my opinions heard when it comes to my grandchildren.
Normally she doesn't respond like she did. Going forward I will keep my
thoughts to myself.But all is good.

That's good to know Tessa

Dr Spock was very well-used when mine were small. Not having DM close by I needed that reassurance.

I didn't realise that babies and small children have minds of their own .
They haven't really changed in their needs over the centuries, either, despite what all the seminars, books etc tell us.

There appear to be several of us on here who appear to have been rescued from the desert wastes of unsupported child rearing by Doc Spock! Glad to hear you have made your peace with your DD, Tessa!

Tessa101 - a gracious response. Glad all is good between you and DD.

I brought my children up on the advice from Mother and Baby magazine. Whatever they said, I obeyed! I was brought up without hugs, and was never praised for anything. My parents were good people but they were following the fashion of the day. If i looked in a mirror mum would comment that I was vain. As a grandmother, I give lots of hugs, and praise everything little thing they do.

Most of us did our damnedest to raise our children to the best of our ability,
I'm yet another Spockie; wore out two copies.'
If your daughter needs a little something to boost her mothering self- confidence - good luck to her.

So, yes - I do think YABU
You raised your children your way. Why not let her raise her's in her own way?

After all, she is the product of your own method of child-raising.

Emotional resilience is really just a fancy name for coping with stressful situations-something we could all do with!
I agree that some modern parenting ideas and methods seem strange but that doesn't necessarily mean they are wrong or "bad." Think back to your children's early years and you'll probably recall discussing the latest ideas with friends and peers.Weren't your parents and in-laws ideas a bit "old fashioned" too?
My daughter decided to use Baby Led Weaning with her third child.I had never heard of it and was a little unsure about the idea of skipping purees and mushy soft food.Once my daughter explained the very simple idea and I
had seen how much better it was,I was in total agreement that it worked well.
2 of my grandsons are also home educated with an Unschooling method.Yes,I was unsure about that too but the boys are so much happier and enjoy learning instead of hating it.They are clever,knowledgeable and interested in everything.The world is their classroom and they spend lots of time outdoors too.
So I would say please don't dismiss "new" ideas and theories-they are likely to be simple methods with modern and often puzzling names!I am sure that your daughter is,like most parents,just trying to do the best she can-support her!

There have always been people to advise new parents, sometimes helpful sometimes disastrous. When I was born the great guru was one Dr Truby King, who was a farmer who discovered that if he fed his veal calves every four hours he could fatten them up for slaughter very quickly. On to a good thing, he wrote a book advocating that human babies should be treated in the same way. If they cried to be fed, parents were advised to put them in another room and let them cry. He said it developed their lungs. Um!

I think todays parents are very lucky to have so much information available to them. I always said that I wish my children had been born with a instruction manual. All that indecision and hoping that I was doing it right. It's a scary thing bringing up children and if there is help available 'embrace it' I say.

Life is far more complex today than it was 50 years ago. News papers are regularly reporting the increase in mental health problems in young children with lower and lower ages.

There are huge demands made on children to succeed, keep themselves safe, cope with electronic media relationships etc. As a result parenting that helps develop resilience is now seen as protective and helpful to children's mental health. Its not a complicated idea ans as said above is based on attachment theory. The basics seem to be as follows:

Resilience is the ability to steer through
serious life challenges and find ways to
bounce back and to thrive.
We are born with the capacity for
resilience. But resilience is not something
we have or don’t have. We work on it
throughout our lives. And we need to
start as early as possible. Parents are the
most important people to help build
their children’s resilience.
Children learn a lot by watching their
parents. When parents cope well with
everyday stress, they are showing their
children how to do the same.
Why is it important to
develop resilience?
Resilience makes a big difference in
people’s lives. People who respond to
hardships with resilience are:
• healthier and live longer
• happier in their relationships
• more successful in school and work
• less likely to get depressed
What builds resilience?
Many of the things that support healthy
development in young children also help
build their resilience. These things include:
• a secure bond with a caring adult
• relationships with positive role models
• opportunities to learn skills
• opportunities to participate in meaningful activities
etc.
www.beststart.org/resources/hlthy_chld_dev/pdf/BSRC_Resilience_English_fnl.pdf

I am very aware that as I grow older I cannot take my resilience for granted.

www.ucl.ac.uk/icls/publications/op/op3.pdf

'Resilience is derived from using resources, primarily interpersonal,
to stabilise the life change consequent on adversity.'

As our friends die and we attend their funerals, then we have to go through a sequence of operations - cataracts, knees, hips etc. Finding ways to bounce back, maintaining a positive outlook and being good company for others is essential. Social policy is now focussing on how to promote resilience in the older person. For this I am grateful.

www.cpa.org.uk/information/reviews/CPA-Rapid-Review-Resilience-and-recovery.pdf

I hope your daughter takes from the seminar that which is helpful both for her children and herself.

All the best.

Emily, if I had a 'Like' button I would click it.

Thank you for the links, Emily.

Great post and wonderful replies! I too was thousands of miles away from any family when my first was born in a small town in central Africa. Dr. Spock was consulted hourly. My first copy disintegrated from so much use! I wish I had had seminars and classes and community support. And, Tessa101, thank you for your openness. I have not yet learned the art of keeping my mouth shut, and I realise that the occasional hurt, defensive response from my DiL just shows that my approval matters to her. It's a minefield out there......

I'm glad to hear that so many of you relied on Dr Spock or other books, etc. So did I. But I hear so many people say, "I just flew by the seat of my pants and my kids turned out great!" that I sometimes wonder if there was something wrong with me (and my DDs who also turn to books, the Internet, etc.) Good to know there are others who feel they need/felt they needed some help! But everybody's different, I guess.

Tessa, I think your DD heard your comment as, "Why are you going to a seminar? There's no point! You're being ridiculous!" Even though that's not what you meant. Glad you apologized. And I agree, sometimes it's better to keep our opinions to ourselves cuz they read things into them that we don't mean.

That is interesting, Emily

However, I do think that 50+ years ago we had to learn resilience also -
There are huge demands made on children to succeed, keep themselves safe, including the first two you mentioned. However, your mention of coping with electronic media and all the pressures that seems to be bringing to young lives is one that we never had to cope with and it is a very large part of their lives today, not a world I look forward to my DGC joining in with, but they will.

There was a lot of pressure on us from the age of about 9 with the 11+ (not something most children encounter today), being resilient and finding a way forward if you 'failed', the pressure of all the exams if you 'passed'. Finding our own way around to and from school whereas today many are taken to and fro by car. There was unkindness and bullying in those days too.

I do think that some of today's children are not learning resilience in their day to day lives as a natural part of growing up, many parents seem to wrap them up in cottonwool. So it will probably do the parents more good (and of course filter down to the children) to attend seminars such as these!

I always keep my thoughts to myself as I think my daughter needs lots of reassurance that she is doing well as a mother. There is far too much criticism of young mums. She is bringing up her children differently to me, but then every generation does! Whatever works for them and she is doing a great job.

I was another advocate for Penelope Leach.