Parenting Styles... Dutch edition
You know that feeling when you read parenting advice and then you feel like a failure? Yeah, I hate that too.
I found a series of three articles that outlines some Dutch parenting philosophy and since my dad was born in the Netherlands and I've always felt a connection with that heritage I thought it would be fun to read them. Wasn't expecting much.
And all of a sudden, I felt supported in a few of the parenting decisions we've made (that I was previously feeling guilty or stupid about), namely:
I found a series of three articles that outlines some Dutch parenting philosophy and since my dad was born in the Netherlands and I've always felt a connection with that heritage I thought it would be fun to read them. Wasn't expecting much.
And all of a sudden, I felt supported in a few of the parenting decisions we've made (that I was previously feeling guilty or stupid about), namely:
- not teaching E more than a few letters/sounds (plus the alphabet song) before starting JK
- having E and now T play happily by themselves a lot even as babies (starting with walking out of the room for a minute or two)
- our choices in toys and extreme limitation of technology time (12 minutes a day from age 2-4)
- my borderline obsession with child-handwashing
- a relatively structured attempt at routine day to day, though we give ourselves a break every once in a while
Have a read and take it with a grain of salt! Either way, an interesting perspective from a slightly different culture.
We also don't let our toddler have any screen time (aside from cameo appearances during weekly video-chats with family).
ReplyDeleteI wish we could get her to sleep more but she hates sleeping so much. We turn of all the lights and sounds (except for street sounds that we don't control) and still she just screams for over an hour instead of sleeping. She refuses to snuggle or bathe! Lying together is the only thing that works but it can often take upto a couple of hours before she stops rolling around in bed and falls asleep :-(
Sleep is so hard! If she hates bath time I would try to move that to the morning to have it not be associated with bed time.
DeleteTowards the bottom of this post I mention a few sleep tricks we use while travelling, but also do at home. http://grievefam.blogspot.ca/2015/10/general-tips-for-travel-with.html
Especially spending time in the room every night after dinner/before bed.
I do know other families that happily lie down with their kids to go to sleep and eventually the kids grow out of it.
For us, we did have to do a gradual sleep training with E as a toddler, getting him settled, lying him down, then sitting on the floor, sitting at the open door, sitting outside the closed door etc. There were tears but we were calm and supportive. Our phrase we repeated was "Love you E, have a good sleep" and we would say this over and over to reassure E we were there and to not get sucked in to whatever conversation he was trying to start.
Best of luck to your family!