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385 of 428 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A more neutral perspective, November 25, 2005
This review is from: On Becoming Baby Wise: The Classic Sleep Reference Guide Used by Over 1,000,000 Parents Worldwide (Paperback)
I am not interested in Ezzo- or GFI-bashing here in this review.
As a mom of three infant boys, each a little over a year apart with one more on the way, I see nothing wrong with the gist of the Babywise book. The principles for eating and sleeping work rather well if you employ them with some grace and flexibility as tiny ones require. Contrary to what you may have heard, the Ezzo's do not suggest tossing your tenderness, intuition, or creative parenting out the window--they provide some basic eating/sleeping instructions very similar to those sent home with Mom a generation ago from Dr. Spock, the pediatrician, or the hospital nurse (but not highly common nowadays due to the AAP's shift in philosophy). Such advice will not harm your baby unless you employ their methods religiously as if it is the "magic formula" to enjoying newborns. There exists no such formula--not in Ezzo, and not in the Sears or child-centered camp either.
Briefly, the basic principles covered include:
1. Feeding approx every three hours
2. Trying to keep your baby awake during feedings and a little afterwards.
3. Putting your baby down to sleep before the next feeding
4. Keeping your baby on a eat-wake-sleep routine to help their hunger stabilize for faster nighttime sleeping.
5. Trying not to allow babies to become overdependent for sleep on any one prop (rocking, swings, slings, pacifiers, car rides, etc).
6. Generally helping the baby's needs to fit into you and your family's routine, rather than arranging you and your family's needs completely around the baby's routine (or having none at all).
I maintain that these principles, while presented a little briskly, are not damaging to infants. They are in fact very helpful if after a month or two your baby does not naturally seem to eat or sleep with any pattern, or if he/she has the days and nights mixed up. But people take the Ezzo's too far when they pretend that their methods are gospel to tending, pacifying, or loving newborns--or MAKING them do anything. All they can do is provide guidelines for structure. And yet there is a tendency for new parents with a distinctively wailing newborn to be anxious for solutions to stop the crying, and for signs that they are feeding the child enough, doing all the right things. If you follow Ezzo (or Sears) believing that they will keep you safe, your real relationship with your baby may suffer because that is the wrong mentality to approach parenting. It is this formula-seeking, intimidated approach to parenting that is the real danger to a child's health and psychology, not the actual guidelines in the book. I thoroughly believe that any wild incidents you hear about concerning Ezzo-following came from this mentality, at the root.
That said, it is also true that not all methods are created equal. With one preschooler, one two-year old, one baby, and one forthcoming child in the house now, my husband and I have found that a philosophy which leans a little more towards where the Ezzo's are coming from produces better results than the philosophy that the Sears' or even the AAP endorses, especially by late toddlerhood. The tendency for child-centered parenting to go awry by the two-year old stage--for the parent OR the two-year old!--is noticeable. And the time demands on a parent (or two) practicing this way is almost impossible if you work or your children's ages are close together.
I agree that Babywise could use a little more seasoning of flexibility and lovingkindness in its presentation. It seems to assume that you have already heard all the right ways to parent and is therefore coming from a corrective position rather than an objectively inexperienced one. However, the basic principles are presented clearly and that is the purpose of the book. I found that the principles worked especially well with my first son who cried a lot, had reflux, and could have been considered "a difficult baby." The advice was not so necessary for my next two sons who were easier babies in the eating/sleeping area (and had a more experienced mom!). For more warmth and depth, I'd recommend Tracy Hogg's "Secrets of the Baby Whisperer" which combines the best of the Babywise advice along with some humor and nuanced examples of how to apply this stuff.
Or, on the philosophy end, you can try "The Mission of Motherhood" by Sally Clarkson for a vision of motherhood as a whole and then try to apply the Babywise advice in that context. After all, parenting (even infants) is not just about helping them to eat and sleep right... although it certainly feels like that for the first couple months.
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82 of 96 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Very misunderstood, but wonderful book, February 22, 2006
This review is from: On Becoming Baby Wise: The Classic Sleep Reference Guide Used by Over 1,000,000 Parents Worldwide (Paperback)
A friend recommended this book to me before my first daughter was born, and after reading the reviews on Amazon, I was certain that I wanted no part of it. After my friend assured me that the things I had read were in no way true, I bought the book and have used it with both my girls, and recommended it to everyone I know expecting babies.
First of all, this book NEVER says not to feed your baby if he/she is hungry. In fact, it states in bold, in several places, that you absolutely need to feed your baby if he/she is hungry, regardless of whether they last ate 3 hours ago or 1 hour ago. One of the main points of the book is to try and figure out why your baby is crying or upset. If he/she is hungry, feed the baby. However, your baby may cry for many reasons, and not all of them are because the baby is hungry. Feeding your baby everytime he/she cries leads the baby to snacking, which isn't good for you, and is especially bad for the baby if you are breastfeeding. The richest, most calorie dense milk (hind milk) is found toward the end of the feeding cycle, and doesn't come the first few minutes of nursing. If your baby is snacking, he/she is never getting that rich hind milk.
The second main point of the book is to change the cycle that most parents employ with their babies. Instead of putting the baby to bed right after feeding, feed the baby after he/she wakes up from naps. This way, the baby will stop eating when he/she is full, not when he/she is tired, which is a huge problem, especially with very little babies.
I don't believe there is one single right way to raise children, so if you've read the book and don't think that their methods fit with your lifestyle or goals, that's one thing. But I can't see how anyone who has actually read the book can dismiss it as dangerous. Again, the book tells you in several place, in big, bold letters, that if your baby is hungry, FEED YOUR BABY!
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23 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Followed this with three children, February 12, 2004
This review is from: On Becoming Baby Wise: The Classic Sleep Reference Guide Used by Over 1,000,000 Parents Worldwide (Paperback)
and would warn all parents to stay away!We truely thought that having our children on a schedule as early as possible would be the best thing for all involved. We still are highly scheduled people. Now our schedules come from our natural tendencies and routines that form early on in a child's life, though. We bought into this material hook, line and sinker. We wanted to raise "good" kids. What we got was not what we signed up for. We got a highly aggressive, angry 2nd born and a failure to thrive second born due to forcing OUR schedule on them. Mr (not DR, as some call him) Ezzo uses extreme examples to show that his way is the best way. In all honesty ANYTHING to an extreme is bad. His examples purposely draw a line in the sand - "which parent do YOU want to be?" When, honestly, parenting is not a formula set out by ANYONE - but a constantly growing, changing, living organism. He constantly contradicts his own advice throughout the book. ie: Encouraging you to be disciplined in staying with the program, while also telling you to be flexible with the schedule - yet if there's problems with the schedule, advising you to work on getting the child into the schdule. He lacks greatly in education and experience to teach about parenting. Do we want our children to grow up the way his have? (at last report Mr Ezzo himself said that he had a "cordial" relationship with his daughters. *CORDIAL*?!? - is that the relationship I want with my children? though, cordial is a step up from the not-so-long-ago "estranged" relationship they shared.) Mr Ezzo's materials are harmful to children. Some results of his parenting advice include: failure to thrive, ODD, RAD. and that's just the people I know personally (and more than one with the diagnoses) Before considering this book to learn parenting methods please check out www.ezzo.info and read through the site - esp the testimonials. Aslo - what IS all the hype about sleeping through the night? Children learn to sleep through when they are developmentally ready - and it DOES happen, but when weighing a full night's sleep against early return of menses, high risk of FTT (when forcing sleeping through on a child), higher risk of SIDS and possible attachment disorders - I'd rather stay awake ALL night than have those things, so getting up once or twice in my 8hrs of sleep is time well-spent for me! besides which, it's really the only time the baby and I ever have truely alone. Btw, our children are not wild miscreants as Ezzo would have you believe they are b/c we didnt follow his program. They are very well-behaved, five of them sleep through the night (baby's 7mo and it'll happen), we have a household schedule based on our own observation of routines and we're NOT these crazy stressed out ppl pulling our hair out b/c our children make us miserable. We find much joy in them and so do others. to quote a poster on the ezzo debate board:
anything good found in ezzo's books is not unique and anything unique found is not good
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