In the foreword to her new book “Your Child . . . Your Way” Dr Tanya Byron says something rather unexpected. The parenting industry, she declares, is marketing a “simplified and unrealistic view of parenting”. The raft of books and television programmes that has sprouted from the modern preoccupation with the “right” way to rear a child is not helping but increasingly disempowering parents. They are becoming overwhelmed and confused by a burgeoning industry that is presenting the most instinctive human function — raising one’s offspring — as a combination of easy tips and techniques to be learnt like a five times table. The genre, she seems to be saying, is a monster spinning out of control…

… You don’t have to be a psychologist to feel queasy at some of the stuff we now see on television. Dr Byron may be too diplomatic to identify specific programmes but I am not. One that stood out as particularly distasteful was I Smack and I’m Proud, an ITV production in which parents boasted of their iron discipline by hitting their children in front of the camera. If this kind of thing is now a part of the genre then I can see why she wants no part of it. In any case her message seems to be that parents should trust their own instincts more and not rely on one-size-fits-all rules from a parenting manual that might not suit their own individual child.

Which brings us to Dr Byron’s new book. At a time when neurotic, competitive parents are increasingly hung up on strict bedtime routines, potty training, eating and myriad other aspects of toddlers’ “ideal” behaviour, reading it is a blessed relief…

Here’s an example. She wonders why some parents are so preoccupied with pushing their children into potty training perhaps before they are ready. “Early bladder and bowel training is not an indication of a future place at Oxford University,” she writes, and “How many 15-year-olds do you see in nappies?”

Ditto parents who are overly anxious about their child’s eating. Put yourself in their shoes, she says, and next time you’re having a meal, get a friend to peer into your face, repeatedly mop it with a fragranced wipe and see how you like it. Most pleasing to me as a passionate dissenter of Gina Ford’s methods is her declaration, both as a mother and a child psychologist, that she isn’t comfortable with rigid routines for newborn babies. You should feel able to lift them when they cry at night and fall asleep on your chest, says Dr Byron. You need to get to know each other, to establish a bond before setting precise routines. “The young baby should not be viewed as a task but as a new, precious and bewildered little human being,” she writes.

The first half of the book is a more practical guide with advice, for example, on how to deal with tantrums, how to gradually introduce bedtime routines, sensible toilet training and encouraging small children to eat. But it differs from traditional parenting books in that its standpoint is showing the parent how to really make it work, effectively “combining thinking and emotion”…

“You can buy every book on the planet but if you don’t believe you’re a good parent and don’t believe your child is capable of being a lovely child … none of it will work.” …

Source: The Sunday Times, UK
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