Picture this scenario: a baby is born in a water bath (a warm hot tub) surrounded by friends of the parents and the paternal grandparents.
Mother nurses her baby and takes some time away from her full time medical studies to initially care for her child.
The child is still nursing at a year but the parents (in the 30 to 40-something age group) decide that in order for the mother to seriously continue her studies to become a naturopathic doctor (no less!) and the father to work, the child must go into full time care. As with many people new to an area, they don’t know a kindly family who could take in their 1 year old and so they opt for a certified day care centre.
Around the time she’s 2 years old that centre closes (where is the continuity of care?) and a new one is found.
That same summer, shortly after the daycare change, the family takes a several day holiday to visit an aunt – the drive is 6 hours each way.
Within a month the toddler flies for 3–4 hours (maybe longer) with her mother to visit her maternal grandmother and spouse for several days. It transpires that the spouse in some way made the child apprehensive of men.
Within the next couple of weeks the child flies a similar distance with her father to visit the paternal grandparents. According to reports “she had 10 temper tantrums in the first dayâ€.
Wow, who did not understand this child?
She would not go to her paternal grandfather with whom she had previously been comfortable, but in her own home. She lifted her paternal grandmother’s shirt. Her father wouldn’t allow her to blow bubbles because “it will take 45 minutes because she doesn’t want to stopâ€.
After an exhausting visit and after she returned home it transpired that the child wasn’t yet weaned from breastfeeding!! (That’s why she lifted her grandmother’s shirt — any long term nursing mother knows that scenario!)
What about this child’s comfort did no one understand? She has simply become a ‘family pawn’. All the grandparents are so desperate to see the child I suggest that they buy the airline tickets so as not to allow the parents to refuse the invitation to visit.
Children will have temper trantrums – that’s when they realize that they are pawns in the game of ‘family’. It is unconscionable of the parents to allow the child to travel without her mother while she’s still breastfeeding. It amounts to parental use of the child. Did the mother think she could force her child to wean?
This is child neglect – it’s just a form we’ve come to accept.
Trust me, children who are well taken care of rarely have temper tantrums. The least cared for children have the most tantrums and the tantrums go on until a child is 4 or 5 years old, maybe longer!!
Parenting IS a compromise. However, it should be a compromise on the part of the parents NOT ON THE PART OF THE CHILD!
Please don’t have children if you need to follow a career. Your children will never quite reach their maximum potential when they are infants and toddlers nor as adults. There is a ‘hold back’ effect caused by mediocre care.
Such children are frequently ‘health challenged’, ‘socially challenged’, often ‘developmentally challenged’ or ‘cognitively challenged’.
I have experienced the ‘health challenged’ first hand and to some extent the ‘socially challenged’. I understand the child rearing mistakes I made and have observed those made by others and have endeavoured to correct those that are correctable whenever possible.
None of us is perfect in our parenting – it’s a learning experience all along the line. But there are some ways of parenting that are more beneficial to a child than others.
We all need to keep on learning.
Child neglect is a criminal act even when the general public doesn’t see the obvious signs.