Comment Releasing the inner reactionary... (Score 1) 323
I'm basically a fairly liberal person, but when I read about "progressive" scientists wanting to "construct new strategies for parenting", my inner reactionary boils over.
I have three kids ranging in age from 12 to 20. I agree that spanking is a bad strategy; I never used it. I also agree that timeouts are useless, especially for very young kids. For very young kids, a stern reprimand delivered immediately after the undesired behaviour usually works. For older kids, removing a privilege is quite effective provided you don't make empty threats. Don't threaten anything you're not prepared to carry through; kids can smell a bluff a mile away.
But letting a kid cry it out until they sleep through the night? That's a godsend. My first daughter was not sleeping through the night even at 11 months. Finally one night I said "That's it, I don't care how hard she screams, we are NOT going in there."
It was a couple of hours of hell. And then 19 years of bliss.
All you really need to be a decent parent is to love your children and to have common sense. Unfortunately, the latter is sometimes in short supply, especially among people "on a mission to change parenting." That itself is a cringeworthy label.