Convenience Parenting

A lot has been discussed over the years about the most effective parenting techniques:

Hyperschedulers: These parents schedule every minute of every day of their children. I've run in to a few parents who fit nicely in this category. When I looked at this parenting technique, I realized it's not for me. I like to be able to adapt to situations and not be homebound because of nap/bed times and eating times.

Purely Flexible Schedulers: These parents have no schedule. Bedtime naptime and eating are completely arbitrary to what ever the day brings. However, they too are bound by what their children want or need.

So evolved our parenting method: Convenience Parenting. This evolved, for us, over time. I tried to be consistent with Josh as I was nursing him and he was sleeping through the night at six weeks. However, if something came up during his usual feeding time, I'd just adjust it to fit my schedule. I didn't worry that he ate an hour earlier than usual or 1/2 hour later. We were careful not to make bedtime a long ritual. We rarely read books at night. When it was time for bed, we'd lay him in his crib, turn off the light and close the door. He'd spend time playing and then he'd fall asleep.

On Josh's first birthday, I was sick and tired of washing bottles, so I packed them all away. I don't know if this was traumatic for him. I never got in the habit of having him carry a bottle around with him everywhere. It was strictly for meal times and a few other times during the day. He didn't seem to mind me carting all the bottles downstairs. But he went to strictly sippy cups from there.

At 14 months, I was sick and tired of looking for his binky before he'd go to bed. Some days it would be a half hour ordeal. So one day, we stopped looking. We put him to bed without his binky and three nights later he finally fell asleep. (Okay, an exaggeration, but it felt like three nights.) In actuality, it really only took three nights for him to stop crying for an hour or more before succumbing to slumber. I think it helped that he wasn't talking yet so I didn't have to hear him whine about his missing binky.

When it came time to potty train, we let him go at his own pace. We never pushed and one day he just did it. This isn't always the case, but it was for us.

So last night we encountered another "convenience parenting" moment. We have been allowing Josh to sleep with his bedroom light on because he's afraid of the dark. However, he's now directly across from our bedroom and the light is bothersome. Also, when baby #2 comes, I don't want the light on to keep her up. So yesterday, we picked out a really cute Mater lamp at Walmart. Then we unscrewed his lightbulbs from the ceiling light. I'm happy to report that he wasn't too mad. He did finally fall asleep. The light emits just the right amount of light and all was well until about 4:30, when he came crying into our room and was banished to the floor. (We don't allow him to sleep in our bed. It's too small of a bed for the three of us).

So while there's nothing wrong with the aforementioned parenting techniques, ours is truly for our benefit. For the most part, having a child has not interfered with our lives that much. We've just adapted to taking him with us. Sometimes, Josh has to remind me he hasn't eaten. But other than that, I think we're doing pretty good.