Becoming an attachment parent. Crying it out, how hard it is to witness.

Crying it out, how hard it is to watch…

Last autumn when our baby, M, was 6 months old, we visited people we knew with a little girl and a 4 month old. It was awful, one of the worst weekends ever. Why? because they’d chosen the cry-it-out method with their children.
I managed to get through it by thinking it would soon be over. The worst was not being able to say or do anything. I didn't actually know them very well. The husband was someone F had met at work and got on with and we didn't really know much about their opinions on child care. Anyway, they had two children so as you can imagine we, with our 6 month old, couldn't really question their methods. And although I was itching to pick the baby up and hold her a little, I just held our baby a little closer to me and held my breath.
So we couldn’t say anything about what they were doing but we did answer their questions about what we did and assumed the fact that M stayed up all through dinner and until we went to bed. The mother asked me 'what would happen if you just put her in bed on her own' and I replied, 'well she wouldn't go to sleep and she'd cry' and left it at that. I could tell she was itching to tell me to do it and they really saw the whole crying out thing as something to be proud of having got through, like a sacrifice you have to make to be a good parent, not an over indulgent one like us being the implication. The mother was breastfeeding and said she enjoyed it although she was a bit taken aback by my on demand approach (yes on demand really means every time). When we talked about how long and I said I wanted to continue as long as M wanted she said it made her think it might be worth carrying on longer and she was really impressed by the wrap, M slept for 2hours in it while we were out walking.
It was just so sad, the baby, V, smiled once over two days and F was saying to me, 'do you think it's just her age' and I was replying 'no, I think it's because she's only picked up to be fed, and even then only when her mother thinks she should be hungry'. It was like in the continuum concept; I only saw them interact with her once. The room we slept in was the coldest in the house and the furthest from downstairs and they told us that was where they’d put her in the beginning so they wouldn’t hear her. At one point when we were eating she was crying in her bouncy seat. The mother said, ‘oh she’s probably tired’ and so the father lifted her out, she stopped crying, and put her in her pram, she started crying again. His reaction? He placed the pram as far away from the table as possible so she wouldn’t disturb us.
It was really hard not to say anything but we were staying at their place, 2.5hr drive from Paris and I would have found it rude to comment, but at the same time it's hard. We wouldn't go and stay with them again and both agreed the weekend was awful. What I found particularly hard was that it upset M to experience parents not responding to their baby's needs, she seemed to want me to respond to the other baby and I found myself explaining to her that the baby's mummy would respond, that it would be okay. In fact since then, whenever another baby cries I watch her reaction and always explain to her what that baby's mummy or carer is doing and why the baby's crying.
The whole thing made me realise that I couldn't really be friends with someone whose opinions on parenting are so alien to my own. In the end parenting ends up being a philosophy and one that's very divisive.  I like to keep an open mind and to remember that all parents are doing what they really believe is best for their baby but I also tend to spend time with those people whose ideas are closer to my own. I think I need that support to nurture my own fragile tentative at parenthood, to keep me going when it’s hard and I need reminding why I’m doing it this way, attachment parenting or whatever you want to call it.
HG.