Choose your own parenting philosophy

The other night, I turned toward David, whose eyes were glazed over in front of some television show about the universe, and I asked him, "Do we have a parenting philosophy? I don't think we do. What do you think your parenting philosophy is?"

Without moving his head or his eyes or (barely) his lips, David muttered, "Spare the rod, spoil the child." And reflected in his staring eyes, the image of Carl Sagan flickered, droning on and on about the development of the cosmos.

Thanks, baby.

Apparently I have managed to make it almost two years into the life of my first child without developing an official parenting philosophy. And apparently my husband has, too. (For those whose sense of humor is not as finely calibrated along the sarcasm scale, David was kidding.) Yes, yes, we probably should have thought of this two years ago. But we didn't. See, this is yet another example of how people like me, once we decided to have a baby, got inundated with Pregnancy Info and Buy This For Your Baby Info but not nearly enough of You Have a Kid, Now What? Info or How to Successfully Raise Your Child Info.

And, apparently, "If Mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy" is not an officially sanctioned or copyrighted parenting philosophy. Who knew, right? So I turned to our trusty friend Dr. Google. And even though I rarely ran across How to Successfully Raise Your Child Info when I was pregnant, that didn't mean that there was a dearth of people vehemently giving advice on that very topic. Au contraire. There are parent-centered philosophies (see: Babywise or Ezzo) and there are child-centered philosophies (for example, Attachment Parenting). Who knew there were so many kinds? I mean, I managed to become a parent without even thinking about it, but others are so passionate about how their methods are the One True Way that they've written hundreds of thousands of words about them. I'm a little skeptical about most of this, though: anytime anyone claims to know the Right Way to Do Something, my little Skeptic-meter pops up. (You can't see it with the naked eye, but it's finely honed, trust me. Besides. I'm the only one who knows the Right Way to Do Everything.)

So I did something extremely useful (see, I can be sarcastic, too!). I found a "parenting style" quiz on About.com. Incidentally, not that I really thought that it would be a useful exercise, but I hate those "yes or no" style quizzes. What ever happened to "sometimes" or "occasionally" or "it depends"? Are all parenting matters really so black and white? But I figured, what the heck. William's finally napping. Let's see what the quiz has to say before I go snarking on it.

I apparently scored a 70 percent, which means my parenting style most closely aligns to a style of parenting know as Attachment Parenting, or AP. Attachment Parenting, for the record, is one of the only so-called parenting philosophies that I could even remember. I was kind of horrified, though. From what I knew of AP, AP adherents tend to breastfeed their toddlers at night, sleep with their kids in their bed, and continue to strap their kids onto their bodies in slings even if the toddlers weigh 40 pounds and are crippling them.

Man, I had William in the bassinette the first night he was home from the hospital. Then we moved him to his his crib a couple of months later. I tried doing the sling thing with him when he was about two months old, but I soon concluded that 1) I was a weakling with a weakling's back and shoulders, 2) my child had a lot of mass and took up space, and 3) the stroller would be better for everyone's physical well-being. I mean, I think I may have lost an inch of height just from the month or so that I grimly attempted wearing William in a sling. And needless to say, I was not going to get on board with any program that expected me to nurse a toddler in the middle of the night when we should both be sleeping. Get up in the night to feed a kid who eats half his weight each day in Craisins, cheddar cheese, yogurt, and rice cakes? Ha! Ha ha ha ha! As I've said before, there's a reason that people use sleep deprivation as a torture technique. Imagine me, crazed and sleep-deprived, with my big bushy sleep-deprived Southern hair, trying to be a good, calm, patient mother in the bright daylight to a child who wants to read "Spot's First Walk" for the fiftieth time in a row or who insists on flinging green beans or macaroni off his high chair tray onto my recently clean floor as if he was a benevolent aristocrat tossing money to the poor. Without eight hours of sleep for me, I can only imagine the chaos, the screaming, the insanity that would ensue. I'm shuddering, just thinking about it.

But I went and read up on AP, and I will grudgingly admit that David and I don't believe in spanking as a form of discipline and we do believe in nurturing strong emotional bonds with our child and following his cues when it's reasonable. So I guess some parts of the whole AP ideal might dovetail with some of the stuff that we do.

At the other extreme, you've got the whole Babywise philosophy. Yeah, no thanks. I do believe that it's important to help create an age-appropriate schedule for your child in order to encourage consistency because babies crave consistency. It helps them know what to expect. But like anything good, it can be done wrong. If it's designed to really help the child, say, learn to go sleep at night, that's good. But if it's done so that the parent doesn't have to interrupt his or her schedule to feed a genuinely hungry baby, well, that's not so good. To me, that whole rigid schedule/parent-centered philosophy smacks of ignoring your child's needs in favor of your own desires. I wasn't willing to supress every single one of my own needs to meet my child's needs, but I sure wasn't willing to go the other direction and serve my needs at the expense of his. After all, when he first got here, he couldn't do anything for himself. And even though he's 20 months old, hello, he still needs help with most things. And he's my son! I love him. I want to help him out and meet his needs and help him thrive and be happy. (And eventually learn to use the potty, but that's a topic for another day.) He is...okay, was...a baby, not a Webkinz.(Apparently, there was some trouble for the Babywise folks awhile back after some failure-to-thrive cases developed in families that used that method. Not exactly a ringing endorsement for the philosophy, I'd think.)

So I guess my parenting philosophy boils down to the gray area in the middle of the extremes. Where are the middle of the road parents, the people who believe that extremes are just that: extreme? Has anyone founded the Academy of Middle of the Road Parents yet? (Google says no.) I can envision it now. Our colors would be dark gray and light gray. Our motto (which would be scripted on our seal, which I haven't designed yet) would be something like: "It works for us." But in Latin. Everything sounds more important in Latin. No one would be lambasted for putting their child to sleep in a crib, nor would they be criticized if they really dig the Outward Boundness of wearing their kid around. We would advocate for regular bedtimes and mealtimes, but we'd leave it up to each family to figure out what works best for them and their situations. We'd wear mid-rise jeans; no low-rise or high-rise allowed. We'd organize group outings; we'd go to football games and sit only on the 50-yard-line. Okay, maybe those last two items are taking things a little too far. But I think I'm onto something here...