Jenny
12-30-2006, 11:19 PM
The more I learn about GBD and try to put it into practice, the more I beat myself up emotionally over things I did in the past...
I never felt good about spanking, but my parents and some others whose opinions I really respected kept pushing it, and I read the Dobson books and thought he had a reasonable argument for spanking. Over the summer my dh, ds, and I went on a week-long vacation with my parents and their best friends who have 2 daughters. My parents and their friends are strong supporters of spanking, and E was acting up a LOT those first couple of days there. I know, and I knew then, that he was acting out because it was an 8 hour drive to get there and because he was adjusting to the change of not being at home in his usual routine. But by the third time dh had to take him out of a restaurant and out to the car to calm down because he was screaming, I was miserable. I felt like a huge failure, and I kept getting the "spank him" advice. I ended up in tears in the restaurant because I felt like I was failing so terribly as a parent-- because of the huge public meltdowns AND because four people who I really respect were telling me he'd straighten up if I'd just "make" him behave by spanking him. So dh and I spanked him when we felt like he "needed" it for the rest of the trip. :cry It appeared to work and it got everyone off my back, but I was unhappy about it. After the trip we still spanked him sometimes, but I kept feeling like it just wasn't right. Then I would re-read the Dobson stuff and see his point.
But then a friend told me about GCM. She had mentioned a message board before and I asked her the name of it. She simply told me the name, so I came here to see what it was all about. It has been such a relief to find parents who DON'T believe in punitive OR permissive methods. This site and the books I've read have been wonderful for me and my family; I can tell a huge difference in myself as a parent and in E already, and the approaches I am now using feel SO much more natural. We're not spanking or using time-outs, I'm learning to understand the reasons behind his behavior, I'm learning to be more patient. I could fill pages with the successes I've had with GBD just in the past month. I feel closer to E and much more in tune with him. We're both happier.
But I still feel so guilty.
The spanking isn't the only thing I feel guilty about, either. We used time-outs and I remember talking about how well they worked. We let him CIO when he was a baby (not a newborn, but still, we did it). He's a spirited child, and if you know anything about spirited kids, they're persistent. They'll keep crying, louder and louder. That's exactly what he did, and it made me feel awful, but I felt like it was the only way to get him to sleep through the night.
And I feel terrible about even admitting this one, but I have to get it off my chest... When he switched from a crib to a toddler bed, he would get up and come out of his room ALL the time, no matter how many times we put him back in his bed. So I started locking him in from the outside. That makes me feel so ashamed now. I can't believe I did that to him. He would stand at the door and yell for me and cry, and sometimes I would go in there and get him back to bed, then lock the door again. After a while he got used to knowing he couldn't come out of his room and he stopped trying, so I stopped locking him in. Learned helplessness, basically. Please don't tell me how horrid I was for doing that... I already know. :cry :sick
And then there are the things I didn't do that I wish I *had* done. Breastfeeding, co-sleeping, baby-wearing. I wish I could go back to the day he was born with the knowledge I have now. Lately I have desperately been wanting another baby, for many reasons, but one of them is because I want so badly to do things differently.
Most of the time I don't beat myself up about this stuff. I usually remind myself that I didn't know a better way at the time, that it's in the past, that I'm doing things differently from now on, etc. But lately I've been thinking about it all and feeling rotten.
I had to get all that off my chest.
:bheart
I never felt good about spanking, but my parents and some others whose opinions I really respected kept pushing it, and I read the Dobson books and thought he had a reasonable argument for spanking. Over the summer my dh, ds, and I went on a week-long vacation with my parents and their best friends who have 2 daughters. My parents and their friends are strong supporters of spanking, and E was acting up a LOT those first couple of days there. I know, and I knew then, that he was acting out because it was an 8 hour drive to get there and because he was adjusting to the change of not being at home in his usual routine. But by the third time dh had to take him out of a restaurant and out to the car to calm down because he was screaming, I was miserable. I felt like a huge failure, and I kept getting the "spank him" advice. I ended up in tears in the restaurant because I felt like I was failing so terribly as a parent-- because of the huge public meltdowns AND because four people who I really respect were telling me he'd straighten up if I'd just "make" him behave by spanking him. So dh and I spanked him when we felt like he "needed" it for the rest of the trip. :cry It appeared to work and it got everyone off my back, but I was unhappy about it. After the trip we still spanked him sometimes, but I kept feeling like it just wasn't right. Then I would re-read the Dobson stuff and see his point.
But then a friend told me about GCM. She had mentioned a message board before and I asked her the name of it. She simply told me the name, so I came here to see what it was all about. It has been such a relief to find parents who DON'T believe in punitive OR permissive methods. This site and the books I've read have been wonderful for me and my family; I can tell a huge difference in myself as a parent and in E already, and the approaches I am now using feel SO much more natural. We're not spanking or using time-outs, I'm learning to understand the reasons behind his behavior, I'm learning to be more patient. I could fill pages with the successes I've had with GBD just in the past month. I feel closer to E and much more in tune with him. We're both happier.
But I still feel so guilty.
The spanking isn't the only thing I feel guilty about, either. We used time-outs and I remember talking about how well they worked. We let him CIO when he was a baby (not a newborn, but still, we did it). He's a spirited child, and if you know anything about spirited kids, they're persistent. They'll keep crying, louder and louder. That's exactly what he did, and it made me feel awful, but I felt like it was the only way to get him to sleep through the night.
And I feel terrible about even admitting this one, but I have to get it off my chest... When he switched from a crib to a toddler bed, he would get up and come out of his room ALL the time, no matter how many times we put him back in his bed. So I started locking him in from the outside. That makes me feel so ashamed now. I can't believe I did that to him. He would stand at the door and yell for me and cry, and sometimes I would go in there and get him back to bed, then lock the door again. After a while he got used to knowing he couldn't come out of his room and he stopped trying, so I stopped locking him in. Learned helplessness, basically. Please don't tell me how horrid I was for doing that... I already know. :cry :sick
And then there are the things I didn't do that I wish I *had* done. Breastfeeding, co-sleeping, baby-wearing. I wish I could go back to the day he was born with the knowledge I have now. Lately I have desperately been wanting another baby, for many reasons, but one of them is because I want so badly to do things differently.
Most of the time I don't beat myself up about this stuff. I usually remind myself that I didn't know a better way at the time, that it's in the past, that I'm doing things differently from now on, etc. But lately I've been thinking about it all and feeling rotten.
I had to get all that off my chest.
:bheart