Parenting is pretty much a life-long trial of hits and misses, which don’t end when your child becomes an adult.
But these trials are probably most prevalent when your child is still young and that’s right about when other parents feel like it’s their place to offer you unsolicited advice.
That’s exactly what happened to Steph who is currently in the steaming pits of sleep training her two-year-old Harvey.
In this episode of KICBUMP, Steph reveals why one of the hardest parts of sleep training your child is copping flak from other parents.
Taking onboard the mountain of the advice she received online to cut down Harvey’s midday nap time, she thought she was in for a win and that he might start sleeping through the night again.
Turns out this particular routine didn’t quite work for Harvey and Steph’s sleep trainer reached out to debunk the theory.
“She did remind me that, hey, you know, he may just still need that sleep. He may still need a lot of sleep, a lot of toddlers, a lot of babies need a lot of sleep. Not everyone’s ready to drop the nap, so just try and like let him catch up,” she said.
“And so I just literally stopped capping his nap.”
Steph explains why parenting is not a one-size-fits-all gig and how it made her feel when other parents began criticising her own approach.
“Part of me felt like this is definitely right for us. This is working, this is great. But then you have all the noise of that crap that you get online, especially when you open up about it, of people who completely disagree with sleep training,” she said.
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