Monday, July 23, 2012

spoiled?

I wonder if our babies had after years of infertility are more prone to being "spoiled", i.e. indulged, more than fertile couple's kids.  Today I had a conversation with a lady who has five children and will probably have seven more before menopause without batting an eyelash.  She told me that all her babies slept by themselves in their cribs early on, that none of them was "difficult" in terms of putting to sleep, or leaving them alone to play without them asking for attention.

Emma is another story altogether.  She starts her night time mommy-is-my-prisoner time by rubbing her eyes at 8 pm and pretending that she is tired.  I say pretending because the moment we hit the bed, she jumps on me, stands up, walks along the margin of the bed, takes my book and crumples the cover, wants to play peekaboo under the sheets, and generally is more full of energy than at seven a.m when we wake up.  The fact that I am all too happy to indulge her is doing nothing to curtail this behaviour, of course, hence I am dealing every night with an hour of play time on the bed.

I am not very good at saying no and installing discipline as far as play/sleep delineations, or quiet/attention grabbing times.  Is this because of the way that I am, i.e. kinda' chill, or is it because I have waited for Emma for so long that she can do no wrong?

3 comments:

  1. No, it has to do with children's temperament and parenting style. I also never had a child who went to bed by him/herself or who found it easy as a baby to just sit and play.

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  2. It's not 'spoiled' if they deserve it! :-D

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  3. You can't spoil a baby by loving her, which is what you are doing.

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