Jenn's Blog

Through Tulip Girl's blog I found a wonderful blog entry about Babywise. The whole thing is worth reading, but a couple comments really stood out to me. I've been so frustrated in the past that people seem to think that we were dumb to take Babywise so literally, but I've had a hard time verbalizing why that argument is illogical.

All this is nibbling around the edges of what REALLY bothers me. The harm caused by the Ezzo method to many families is well documented. A small sampling of this harm can be found at www.ezzo.info. Yet the Ezzos and their defenders explain it all away. Comments like 'oh they followed it too literally' or 'oh that is not what BabyWise says' or 'oh come on, you can't blame a book for bad parenting' are thrown about. HELLO!! Can we think about this here? If you were hooking up your new dvd player would you accept an instruction book that could not be taken too literally? If the person teaching you how to ride a bike gave you contradictory information, is it your fault that you, being inexperienced, did not know which advice to take? If you were trying to learn geometry, and you studied hard, did everything the book said to do, did all the homework exactly how you were supposed to, but failed miserably, would you accept that it must have been your fault alone? Come on, that is ridiculous. No one would accept these sorts of arguments in any other aspect of their lives, why does anyone accept it from an instruction book on parenting?

She ends by saying:

Maybe it is because I am a scientist, but to me if a method has a high failure rate, you look at the problem with the method. This is even more true when some of the failures are catastrophic. But in Ezzoland, all success is credited to the method, and all failure is blamed on the practitioner. That is not where I want to live as a parent, and it is not where I want my children to live either.

Finding My Way Home http://fmwh.blogspot.com/2006/07/ezzo-ezzo-everywhere.html

If you are a Babywise follower and think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread - well good for you, I suppose. But please, I beg you, please, do NOT pass this book out to new parents who have no clue what they are doing. And furthermore, if you talk the book up to be the most wonderful thing in the world do not act like the person you loaned it to is off their rocker when they express disappointment and lack of progress with the book. Try to refrain from looking at them like they are imbeciles while saying, "well, of course you can't take it literally. You just pick out the bits and pieces that work for you", in a duh-didn't-you-know-this-already tone of voice. Really now, shouldn't that little piece of wisdom come out when you first loaned out the book???