Gentle Guidance when dealing with Ungentle Friends

[Griffin'sMum]

Hi all,
I'm really struggling at the moment with my emotions and my ungentle friends. I know that raising children is a very personal thing and each family has their own way.
But I’m really hurting at the moment.
How do I deal with friends that let their month old baby CIO?
How do I deal with friends who give their six-month-old time out facing the wall?
How do I deal with friends who smack their 15-month-old baby when wiggling getting a nappy change?
How do I deal with friends (very close ones) who started out with AP and now end up not talking to us and doing something different...but I don’t really know what because they will not talk to us about it where as once they would.

I understand that we are all different but I feel hurt and pain for their children and wish that I could be there to help or hug or love or something.
My friends are wonderful people and I know that they feel they are doing everything they can...but they get angry when their 15 month old hits back or the 6 month old ignores them or the 1 month old just will not break with CIO.
I try to keep an open mind and open heart (as well as not stick my foot in my mouth) and not give out any advice unless asked for.
But I’m becoming a bit depressed when I see dagger looks at my highneeds baby and me sitting in a sling or running round the park or hugging while shopping.
I get depressed when my friends who I love very much and I would listen too when ever they need do not listen to their own children.

Am I being blind? Or just too emotional?
Any suggestions for hardening my heart?

[hanabi]

My dear friend!

Do not harden your heart. You are not blind, nor too emotional.

But you must somehow accommodate the fact that we all have different childhood experiences of being parented and we all make sense of that experience in different ways (the best ways that we are capable of in the time that we have). In many ways, we can only parent as well as we were parented, and it takes a lot of personal growth to move beyond those deeply ingrained expectations and patterns of learning.

We all also have different relationships with our spouses and significant others who we may feel compelled to listen to and somehow accommodate as well.

Perhaps it will help to focus less on what they are doing to their babies and focus more on what limitations and impositions have lead them to choose these methods of dealing with their own pain through their children.

I trust that we are all, always, making progressive changes for the better. And just because this is how they choose to cope with parenting, doesn't mean they will always make these same choices for these babies and future babies.

As a friend, this means respecting each person's individual learning journey. But, as a friend, it also means you can take some liberties to raise your friends' consciousness of their flaws in logic, or their inflexibility, to help them along in their own healing or in their parenting.

My preferred tactic is to raise awareness of their child's experience or point of view. A well-timed question such as, "Do you think she understood why you did that?" might be the catalyst for a whole series of emergent concepts for your friend. If they reply, "She'll learn," maybe your answer will be, "How?" When asked with gentle respect and sympathy rather than anger and judgement, you may find your ideas are more warmly received.

Finally, a book titled, "Parenting for a Peaceful World" by Robin Grille holds wisdom for everyone who aspires to be a better parent, teacher, social worker ... I highly recommend it!

[michelle_j_r]

i have a similar situation with a close friend.
I have probably not chosen the best tactic to deal with it- but i actually don't ask about things like that now.

In the beginning i would offer alternatives to CIO, and formula etc. But now i understand that she loves her child very much but just has a different frame of reference and a different approach, and i think she is just as baffled by my parenting choices as i am by hers.

So to protect myself i have stopped asking about things like sleep and anything else that i know might bring up things i don't want to hear. I would rather live in ignorance than feel sick in the stomach about her little boy crying unanswered in his room.

[DesertFlower]

Ahh, I feel your pain. I don't have kids myself, but I'm the regular babysitter for one family, and the things they say to their children just make me, "Aahhh, stopp!" in my head, but I can't say anything because they're, well, my boss, and besides, they're the parents.

The mother constantly makes comments to her 8 year old daughter (who is tiny, very skinny) that she has a big belly, that she has wide hips, that she's fat and she eats a lot... stuff like that. And the girl just smiles and says, "I know". Ahk! Don't they realise that's the stuff eating disorders are made from??

Some friends of ours have a baby, who is now 12 months old. A few months ago, I was hanging out at their house, and the godfather of the baby (also a 'friend' of mine) was feeding her - baby food out of a jar, so it's mushy and slimy, and she spits a little bit of it out, and he scolded her angrily for like five minutes! She was 9 months old!

But I don't say anything, because as long as they're not, like... physically endangering them, it's not really my place, and all I can do is try to make up for it with extra love and guidance in my own interactions with those children, and try to understand the parents a little more and maybe try to guide them in a more loving direction too...