My recent posts on Ezzo and over-controlling parents don't sit well with moms who've had success with the Ezzo Program. Let me re-iterate a couple points:
*Any program that teaches parents to be rigid and unyielding is - in my opinion - not a godly program. At 60, I have been through 39 years of parenting - in addition to teaching in classrooms. I can now see that as a young mother/teacher, I thought that my relationship with my children was all about my teaching them. As a mature mother/grandmother, I can see that it's been about God teaching me to be more like Him and less like me in my approach.
*Any success mothers have had with Ezzo is due to the fact that their children have been compliant. But God did not make us from cookie cutters. Our job as parents is not to control our kids, but to observe, guide, lead, inspire, shape and role model for them. I like to think of children as gifts from God - we unwrap them to see what's inside and then tailor our lives to provide for opportunities to release the special individual qualities God has built into them.
*Comparing Ezzo to the Sears - Baby Wise vs. Attachment Parenting - is absolutely ridiculous. Dr. Sears and Martha are medical professionals (he a pediatrician, she a pediatric nurse) with eight children - including one with Down syndrome and one adopted. They are now grandparents as well. They have not a hint of scandal attached to their name. The Ezzos have no medical, psychological or theological training to warrant the status they have - through cultlike methods - accumulated for themselves. They have two daughters, now grown, who I understand have disassociated themselves from their parents' work. They have been excommunicated by church authorities, investigated by parachurch organizations. discredited by government and medical professional organizations. The Ezzo program is documented to have caused Failure-to-Thrive and dehydration in infants.
For the complete scoop on Ezzo - and I mean complete, including a timeline of all I mentioned above and more, see www.ezzo.info
The Ezzos have now taken their message into the even less-discerning secular market. That it sells well there only proves that it appeals to parents who want their child to fit around the parents' priorities rather than sacrificing to meet their child's unique needs. Many parents start out with the assumption that kids should conform to their parents' priorities and the will to control, but ideally we all grow into a more mature spiritual understanding that becoming a loving healthy family requires a paradigm shift.
Also important: parents form the child's first image of God. I don't know about you, but when I cry out to God, He is there. The last thing I want to teach a tiny, defenseless baby that he can cry and no one hears.
Or a toddler that he must sit on a blanket with a timer for a certain amount of time! While I am all for nurturing a toddler's God-given potential for self-control, I have written a lot about how to inspire that from within rather than imposing it from without.
I guess I've gotten to the age where I'm more concerned about warning parents of potential danger than in tiptoeing around people's feelings. If you used Ezzo and it worked, all I can say is if you have more children - and even if you don't - your parenting journey isn't over. If you consider yourself wiling to learn as a parent, then keep your mind and heart open. If your children are under 10, you have no idea what God will reveal to you in the years ahead.
I used to be a parent who knew everything too, but the older I got, the more I realized how little I knew.
The most important quality a parent - or child - can have is teachability. That's built on trust - trust between God and parent, parent and child. That trust begins when we answer a child's cry and meet his needs consistently the first year of life. Plenty of time for building independence later. In fact, a secure child will actually be more independent in the long run.
And it is the long run that's important after all - not whether you lose sleep every night for a year. That's just the beginning of the surrendering aspect of the parent's spiritual journey.
My recent posts on Ezzo and over-controlling parents don't sit well with moms who've had success with the Ezzo Program. Let me re-iterate a couple points:
*Any program that teaches parents to be rigid and unyielding is - in my opinion - not a godly program. At 60, I have been through 39 years of parenting - in addition to teaching in classrooms. I can now see that as a young mother/teacher, I thought that my relationship with my children was all about my teaching them. As a mature mother/grandmother, I can see that it's been about God teaching me to be more like Him and less like me in my approach.
*Any success mothers have had with Ezzo is due to the fact that their children have been compliant. But God did not make us from cookie cutters. Our job as parents is not to control our kids, but to observe, guide, lead, inspire, shape and role model for them. I like to think of children as gifts from God - we unwrap them to see what's inside and then tailor our lives to provide for opportunities to release the special individual qualities God has built into them.
*Comparing Ezzo to the Sears - Baby Wise vs. Attachment Parenting - is absolutely ridiculous. Dr. Sears and Martha are medical professionals (he a pediatrician, she a pediatric nurse) with eight children - including one with Down syndrome and one adopted. They are now grandparents as well. They have not a hint of scandal attached to their name. The Ezzos have no medical, psychological or theological training to warrant the status they have - through cultlike methods - accumulated for themselves. They have two daughters, now grown, who I understand have disassociated themselves from their parents' work. They have been excommunicated by church authorities, investigated by parachurch organizations. discredited by government and medical professional organizations. The Ezzo program is documented to have caused Failure-to-Thrive and dehydration in infants.
For the complete scoop on Ezzo - and I mean complete, including a timeline of all I mentioned above and more, see www.ezzo.info
The Ezzos have now taken their message into the even less-discerning secular market. That it sells well there only proves that it appeals to parents who want their child to fit around the parents' priorities rather than sacrificing to meet their child's unique needs. Many parents start out with the assumption that kids should conform to their parents' priorities and the will to control, but ideally we all grow into a more mature spiritual understanding that becoming a loving healthy family requires a paradigm shift.
Also important: parents form the child's first image of God. I don't know about you, but when I cry out to God, He is there. The last thing I want to teach a tiny, defenseless baby that he can cry and no one hears.
Or a toddler that he must sit on a blanket with a timer for a certain amount of time! While I am all for nurturing a toddler's God-given potential for self-control, I have written a lot about how to inspire that from within rather than imposing it from without.
I guess I've gotten to the age where I'm more concerned about warning parents of potential danger than in tiptoeing around people's feelings. If you used Ezzo and it worked, all I can say is if you have more children - and even if you don't - your parenting journey isn't over. If you consider yourself wiling to learn as a parent, then keep your mind and heart open. If your children are under 10, you have no idea what God will reveal to you in the years ahead.
I used to be a parent who knew everything too, but the older I got, the more I realized how little I knew.
The most important quality a parent - or child - can have is teachability. That's built on trust - trust between God and parent, parent and child. That trust begins when we answer a child's cry and meet his needs consistently the first year of life. Plenty of time for building independence later. In fact, a secure child will actually be more independent in the long run.
And it is the long run that's important after all - not whether you lose sleep every night for a year. That's just the beginning of the surrendering aspect of the parent's spiritual journey.