Parents in training

There is a young woman who works at my husband's office who is expecting a baby soon. She's a former Sunday School Student. She's no dummy, and she's just simply a nice person.

She's bringing a baby into a church where Garry Ezzo's parenting methods, especially those for infants, are promoted. There is a couple in our church who have been teaching Ezzo's material for well over fifteen years. I wish I had the courage to speak out in my church about my feelings with regard to this. It really does alarm me that so many of the young mothers are encouraged to follow the Ezzo infant program. In the past, all the new mothers have been given a copy of Ezzo's Babywise book. Now, the couple who teach this material are people I have known for twenty years. They are good parents. They are parents who care about families and children. They love and serve Jesus Christ with their whole hearts. However, I don't agree with their endorsement of Ezzo's parenting.

Yesterday, the woman in my husband's office asked Buggy about "parent-directed feeding." This is obviously the new code word for Ezzo-style feeding schedules. Buggy talked to her about not going to extremes, about the fact that there is no one way of biblical parenting. She admitted as much. In fact, the two of them discussed a phrase that we know to be part of Ezzo's philosophy: God is a God of order, so only orderliness is glorifying to him. This young woman did agree with my husband that this should not be applied too narrowly. Buggy encouraged this young lady to think about the whole concept of parent-directed feeding, about the fact that an infant, at six weeks, is not crying because he's a sinner. He's crying because he's hungry. He's not even 100% aware he's hungry. He just knows that there is something making him uncomfortable, and he's responding to a God-given instinct: to cry.

Buggy also told this young woman that we know of a couple who, ten years ago, had a child that was almost malnourished because of the strict schedule that they felt was the "godly" way to begin feeding their baby. Once the mom took the baby to the doctor and was advised that the child needed to eat more, they began to supplement while the mother built back up her milk supply, and soon, the baby was right where she should be.

Tulip Girl has some links that really explain how Gary Ezzo thinks, and what his program promotes. I would really like to be able to sit down and share some of the information there with this young mother. I have seen what following a strict diet of Ezzo thinking does to children. It creates a situation where "performance" is so focused on that one cannot really be sure that the child is obeying because they want to or because they're just good at providing the correct response. I believe the Ezzo method does indeed try to make the family less child-centred; but I think it does so by making the family parent-centred, and making the convenience of the parents more important.

Check out Tulip Girl's site.