Archive for the ‘Parenting’ Category
Wiggly Disciples
Douglas Wilson writes of parents shepherding wiggly disciples on Sunday morning:
Many of you are here as parents of little ones and, in some cases, many little ones. For you, the worship of the Lord is a far more arduous task that it is for the rest of us. All of us are engaged in the work of worshipping the Lord, but you are carrying young ones in your arms as you perform the same labor that we do. . . .
Read on for encouragement that is really applicable to all of parenting: our parenting is unto God, and he intends for it to be a real part of our worship.
Encouragement to parents
John Loftness writes:
Humility . . . drives us away from self-sufficiency to believing in the promises of God.
Diligence alone will never make a good parent. Faith will. Faith in God’s promises. When we see what he’s promised about our children, it will shape how we think, what we expect, and therefore how we act. The only way to pray by faith for our children is to begin with a focused belief in God’s will for them. “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you” (John 15:7).
These are the words that Nancy and I abide in. They shape our prayers and fix our hope:
“And the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the LORD your God will all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live.” (Deut. 30:6)
“All your children shall be taught by the LORD, and great shall be the peace of your children” (Is. 54:13).
“‘And as for me, this is my covenant with them,’ says the LORD: ‘My Spirit that is upon you, and my words that I have put in your mouth, shall not depart out of your mouth, or out of the mouth of your offspring, or out of the mouth of your children’s offspring,’ says the LORD, ‘from this time forth and forever more'” (Is 59:21).
“For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself” (Acts 2:39—read the context, too).
JI Packer quotes Samuel Clark about God’s promises: “A fixed, constant attention to the promises and a firm belief of them, would prevent solicitude and anxiety about the concerns of life” (Knowing God, p. 115). Is there any greater concern than the concerns we carry for our children? Is there any greater comfort and hope than to hear and believe the promises of the one who spoke and worlds came into being? So pray the promises about your children. And see God work, in them and in you.
Baby Wise
Ezzo, Gary. On Becoming Baby Wise. Hawks Flight & Association, 2001.
Of all the decisions new parents make, perhaps the most controversial is the style of care and feeding to use. There are a lot of competing ideas out there, some of which are strongly opposed to one another, although at times it seems they have more in common than folks are willing to admit. The two ideas that you will most often encounter are demand feeding and schedule feeding.
We have used schedule feeding for our children, and are very happy with the results. We have no experience with demand feeding, though I have heard cogent criticism of it. There is also criticism of schedule feeding, though I think much of it misses the point. Schedule feeding is not blindly clock-driven, but appropriately moderates regularity in service of the baby’s needs. Much of the underlying difference between the two methods is the question of whether babies are autonomous and able to accurately judge their needs; or whether babies are under the authority of parents who are able to wisely balance their child’s felt needs and desires with their child’s actual needs, the family’s needs, and the goal of developing good habits. Schedule feeding is the method that is presented in Baby Wise.
Some caution is needed in approaching Baby Wise. Ezzo frames schedule feeding as the only proper way to parent, which I think is an overstatement. Feeding style is an important decision that has broad influence, including even character development. But it is nonetheless a matter of personal preference, not a matter of religious importance.
Baby Wise has a lot of ideas to digest. We found three points to be of central importance:
- No snack/pacify feeding. This generally means to feed on a schedule, but with some flexibility.
- Follow a pattern of feed, wake, sleep. Avoid letting feeding becoming a crutch for sleeping.
- Establish a fairly consistent morning feeding time.
There are three corollaries that we also found helpful:
- It’s ok for a baby to cry, provided their diaper is clean and it’s not time to eat.
- This approach requires significant discipline, patience, and consistency on the parents’ part. In particular, the father should be committed to leading, encouraging, and helping through this.
- It does not matter whether you are breastfeeding or bottle feeding. We only have experience with bottle feeding, but we know families that have successfully used these methods when breastfeeding. The main challenge with breastfeeding is that it’s more difficult to know how much food the baby is receiving.
While using these principles, all of our children slept through the night by about 12 weeks, and as babies were always at least 80th percentile in weight. Even more importantly, they have been generally sweet and submissive. While we cannot know how much of this is due to schedule feeding, this is what we practice and recommend.
Lisa has also read and recommends Tracy Hogg’s Secrets of the Baby Whisperer, whose approach is similar to the above.
I gotta have my orange juice. 