I went and looked at some of the hand in hand parenting thing. It's basically what we do, so I can't say I don't like it, but:
It's a little overstrong about what will and won't work. For example, they give a story about a girl who cries to sleep with her dad. Her parents worry that she's crying so much she might get sick, but she doesn't, she feels great the next day, having worked throught her emotions. The implication is that the parents were comendable for having stuck to the plan and ridden out the strong emotions despite their worries.
That's great when it works, but I worry about the implication that you should keep with an approach like that no matter how intense/extended the crying becomes. I also worry about the assumption that it's usually better to let a kid "work through it" in extreme tears than to attempt to limit the tears.
I worry about this becasue DS (who is asthmatic) has been to Emerg more than once, and on 6 week courses of meds more than once after we were unable to limit his crying. (In fairness, I should really stress the 'unable' part... we do try everything to limit tears, though I try extreemely hard not to supress the emotion, and to listen to it. And I should also probably point out that it was a breath of fresh air to see this idea in print. It's kinda cool, I actually phrased it the same way when I gave advice to a new-mom friend once "if she cries, don't tune it out, listen to her, that's how your body learns to meet her needs" re:breastfeeding. People very rarely seem willing to admit that the very young are still people and have strong emotions that can't always be simply 'fixed,' and you have to give them the same respect as you would an adult for that)
I react strongly to this, partly becasue people know we've been to the hospital, and we get asked a lot, but also because the fear, all nighters, and hours of having to hold DS down with all my strength and that of DH and several nurses (whose claims that "they all eventually figure out it'll make them feel better" get thinner and thinner as their arms get tireder -- DS is intense, what can I say? People notice. Even nurses, sometimes ;)) in order to get meds into him kinda... well, it kinda glues it to you. Anyway.
I'd say that this is really the approach we use -- only I have to stand strongly against any kind of cry-it-out, even with the best and most careful of controls. We can't be the only ones with the asthma/intense combo (we've also had the head-banging problem, another reason to have to keep the exit valve on its threads). You have to hear emotions out. Yeah. And crying is often part of that. Yeah. But... I think you also have to limit it, you have to TRY to stop it, without stopping up the emotion. Sometimes you even have to shut down the valve a little to keep the steam to a safe level. Even when it means a bad week or a bad month of working through more slowly.
Uh. Does that count as keeping you posted about what works?
Oh, and we've taken the nurtured heart approach to heart, thanks to previous posts of yours. I haven't looked at the book yet, but will
I guess the bottom line is that exceptional kids can be exceptions, to even the stuff that says "they won't starve themselves" or "they won't actually hurt themselves" or "they won't cry themselves sick..." Though I hear that it's actually physiologically impossible to cause longterm damage through voluntary breath-holding
Ag, I'm still editing, but I'm ot of time... so poasting. maybe embarrasing, will see later...
-Mich.
