With most stuff, we try to just display the behaviour we would prefer, or, with more “academic” stuff, gently point out mistakes and encourage Grace to try again. Recently though, she has been “parenting” her doll in ways which quite honestly are an anathema to us - pretending to put him in a cot and shut the door while he “cries”,  smacking and shouting at him etc etc, and also things which are not so awful, but we don’t do, such as bottle feeding and using pushchairs.

I’m aware that she gets this stuff from most of the rest of the world really - books, however carefully we vet, often seem to have babies shut away and/or crying, and obviously she sees lots of pushchairs and bottles in her everyday life. However, we do go to LLL meetings and AP groups - I’d really like her to see those things as normal.

My instinct is to say “that’s not how we treat babies”, but it feels like a very different style to the one we have been employing. As much as I say that everyone trys to parent in the best way they know, it would concern me if my children chose to smack their kids and practise CIO. I know that’s really judgemental….

I don’t really know how we proceed with this - I’m uncomfortable just ignoring it, but also uncomfortable telling her that what is essentially a personal decision - how to parent -  is wrong….

Angie

I may be way off here, but could she just be trying it out, to see how it feels, because it’s so different to her own experience? Maybe she’s just trying to make sense of the world around her - children so often play out the things that worry them, maybe she is just airing her concern about other things she’s seen. Mine often do things like this just to explore my reaction too, so if I’m part of the game I will sometimes just pick up the baby doll (which has just been told off or thrown across the room) and give it a hug and talk gently to it but without appearing to have noticed what the child just did to it at all. I don’t think it matters at this age - they’re not responsible for any children yet and I’m sure getting it out of their systems now won’t mean they’re awful parents when they grow up!! I also think it’s sometimes a power game too - especially when new siblings appear, it’s important for them to have things they can control and exploring different means of control and how each makes them feel inside is important too, I think.

Claire xx

Also, wanted to add, my ds is a good example of the way in which children work out conflicting ideas. His big sister is in a ‘hating’ phase and his little sister is his best playmate and a nuisance at the same time, so he wraps his arms around her when she winds him up and says, “I hate you, darling’”! I think it’s all about exploring expression of their thoughts at this age xx

I agree with fairycakes she is exploring the world around her, particularly as she has a new sibling.  It could also be that she is jealous of her sibling and this is how it is manifesting itself.  She may not have picked this up from anywhere.  Maybe you can engage with her when she is doing it, talking through how the baby might feel to be smacked, shouted at and left to cry alone?  This may also reassure you that it is just exploration rather than how she feels babies should be treated.

I wonder if it might be an idea to try to get her to talk about WHY she is treating her doll like that. Next time she does something unpleasant to her doll, perhaps you could ask her, in a neutral, open manner, why she smacked / shouted at the doll (or whatever she just did)? So rather than telling her what to do, maybe get her to explain to you her reasoning behind it, and then follow that path with more questions. Maybe that would make her think about it differently, reflect on empathy, caring, etc.

Just my tuppence worth:-D

Sustainablemum:-) I didn’t see your post before I submitted mine.

oh angie, really sorry, know it must be hard but it does make me laugh so much the way kids rebel! Maybe she is working through this NOW and not when she has kids of her own? It must be hard to see but I don’t think its likely to be a portent for the future . I’ve always conceptualised play as how kids think and work through things-they externalise and concretise (not sure if thats a word, ykwim) far more.

My guess is that it doesn’t have much to do with the new sibling or any “deep” thoughts, I truly would not read into this that there was anything deeply “wrong” or that she was upset or anything. I think its pretty normal behaviour at this age. She sounds like she is playing with her dolls in the way kids always play with dolls, and probably in the way she plays dolls with other kids,just possibly that because you AP, this feels a bit odd. Don’t know how to put this exactly, but I think we tend to assume that a doll always represents a baby for a child, whereas I think kids do know that they are pretend, and so the behaviours attached to a doll are not those they would associate with a baby-does that make any sense? So she might associate a range of playing with other kids behaviour with a doll, like CIOing, but it not cross her mind with a real baby.

Unless she literally never plays with other kids, she will have had some exposure to other ideas and these conflicting ideas, I think, are often the ones to come out in play, because she will be working through how to resolve them with her existing ideas, iyswim. All my kids have certainly played at feeding babies with bottles, putting them in pushchairs (the thing with pushchairs is that, for a little kid, they are quite fun compared to a sling), have probably played leaving babies to cry, etc, and we don’t do any of those things.

I think the best thing would be to let her play it out. It won’t set in stone for her any ideas about how babies are treated. I am SURE I played games like this as a young child but surrounded by attachment parenting, babies, hippies, it never crossed my mind not to carry my babies, co-sleep, breastfeed. She is not making a statement about her parenting beliefs at age 2/3, I promise! If you really can’t stand it though I think the best thing is to model the preferred behaviour. Also, if you are worried by this (and you shouldn’t be), maybe separately talk to her about how we treat babies?

Mostly, I tend to ignore stuff like that.  All of mine have done it too, and most of the gently-parented children I know!    A few times it has been bothering me, and I’ve said, “please use gentle hands on that dolly, I think if it was a real baby it would be very sad…”  It’s fair to acknowledge when she does something that isn’t wrong in itself (“hurting” an inanimate object lol) but that is bothering you!  (Rowan memorably once started whacking her dolly’s head against the wall and door saying, “BAD baby, BAD baby!”  I didn’t know whether to be appalled or roll around on the floor laughing!)

We’re been through this, my DD is now 10 and expressing all sorts of ideas about how the world could be and frankly I find it all a bit alarming! She talks of ‘punishment’ (a word she has never heard from me) and likes to ‘get back’ at people. Talks about things that ‘serve you right’ and is really quite dogmatic and lacking in compassion at times. However, she is out there, in the playground exploring the world around her and realising that it’s not really like the world she has at home so it must be terribly challenging.

She too talks about (and this is NOT a dig at anyone here, just expressing how different it is to our modelling at home) bottle feeding, cots, crying it out, dummies etc. for when she has her own babies. Mostly I think she does it to provoke a reaction in me and my goodness; our kids know how to push our buttons! So I’m not sure I have any wisdom or advice, but i do have lots of sympathy!

I keep the words of Kahlil Gibrhan in my thoughts at these challenging times which is - you can give them your love but not your thoughts….

I’ve rebelled against everything my parents stood for, because not much of the way they bought me up served me particularly well, so perhaps it’s instant karma or perhaps, horror of horrors, my parenting hasn’t served my DD well <gasp>

I like to think of them as great explorers and who knows what they will decide on in the future…

What Edith said DD1 actually drew a bottle and gave it to me for Amber (although she did say it was full of mommy milk!) Bizarre as she still has breast milk herself twice a day and has never seen Amber have a bottle! We also have babies thrown around here!

Beck xxxxxxxx

when my dd was 7 she said she was going to go to work and leave her baby with me to look after.
she was also going to stick the baby in a cot and stick a pacifier in it’s mouth.

now she is 9 she’s totally AP.

it’s weird to see them playing out what they have seen elsewhere, but also testing boundaries and watching to see how we react. i set a limit at no physical violence to any doll, but otherwise we are talking more and more about parenting style in a spontaneous way as the children get older and they are all free to express themselves and play with various approaches.