Yesterday we published an entry to analyze the Truby King's breeding method, which is more than a hundred years old but that is back on everyone's lips following the publication of a video in which a nurse urges parents to follow this method, based on imposing strict schedules on babies, feed them only every Four hours and leave them alone in your bed all night. As we were halfway, today we continue with this entry.
The mothers were soft
According to King, the mothers were soft, since they were not able to educate a baby alone. That is why they needed to follow their method as a guarantee to get happy and healthy children.
He ordered (the mothers) to suppress their emotions, not to take the baby to cuddle or rock it, to follow their feeding and sleep routines or, otherwise, their children would eventually become criminals or psychopaths.
I told them that what they had done for centuries (caring for babies, comforting them, feeding them if they asked, ...) was harmful to babies. That waking a baby at night to eat was unnatural, that playing with them excited them too much and that the baby could not be given anything he asked for or we would be laying the groundwork for him to have a criminal character.
Take the child out for a breath
One of the most absurd actions that can be seen in the video is that of take the children to “take the air”, alone, inside their strollers. I do not deny that breathing fresh air and leaving your home may not be beneficial, which is, but, since you do, take advantage and take a walk. So in addition to the air you can sunbathe and so there may be a little relationship, or that is visual, with your baby.
Apparently, according to this method, the air is very important and therefore it is also recommended that the window of the room is a little open.
A room for the baby from day one
Truby King said that babies need to sleep for a long time and that is why from the first day they have their own room and are alone in it both at night (they must be in their room from 7pm in the afternoon to 7am in the morning ), as between the shots of the day (except for the time spent breathing air outside).
Obviously, with so many hours of solitude, children cry for company. The mother cannot give in, because if she listens to him she will be giving him contact and will be fulfilling a desire of the baby (horror).
Does the Truby King method work?
Depending on the objective you are looking for, the Truby King method works. This method was followed very often in the 1950s in Britain, when the goal was to have self-sufficient and very disciplined children. If some parents seek to have a child with very marked routines, who do not ask for contact with the parents, who cries little and who sleeps all night will have to say that in most cases the method works.
It is logical. The method is to create conditioning routines that tend to extinguish behaviors that do not want to be enhanced. If we want a child to sleep through the night without complaining, the simplest way is to leave him in the room and barely attend to him when he cries. Babies' night crying has an intention, that their parents come because they are hungry or feel lonely. If he is not treated, there comes a time when the baby, exhausted, stops crying. If this happens every time he cries, he finally learns (most) that it is no use crying, because no one will come.
The same happens with everything else. A baby can be conditioned by behaviorism to make it the way we want it to be and that is why the Truby King method still has followers even today.
Now, if the goal is to have healthy children emotionally speaking, with good self-esteem, who feel loved and loved and therefore able to love and love and, above all, happy and able to develop their own personality, the answer to whether the method works must be, in most cases, no, that then this method does not work. It does not work, simply and simply, because all the suggested actions go against this objective (although in theory it is what King was looking for - I want to believe).
Do with others what you would like them to do with you
One of the most important values that parents should transmit to our children is the "do with others what you would like them to do with you" and likewise "do not do with others what you would not like them to do with you".
It is important because it is the first step for children to learn to respect themselves ("I do not want them to do with me what I would not do to others") and, above all, to learn to respect others.
However, if since birth they carry out such disrespectful methods as the King method, in which a baby can stay locked in his room from seven in the afternoon to seven in the morning and eat every four hours even if the child is literally eating fists, it is difficult for parents to convey this value.
How to explain to a child that he must respect others, if you don't even respect him?
Photos | Torsten Mangner, CharlotteSpeaks on Flickr
In Babies and more | Truby King Method: the factory of unhappiness (I), Emotional abuse or parenting method ?, What Dr. Estivill should explain (if he were sincere), The UN against the Supernanny program
