Bringing Up Baby

Claire Verity: Evil Personified, Vile Dictator

I have been deliberating how to write this post for nearly a week. The emotions that this topic raised in me are not pretty. So whats got me feeling so mad? Channel 4's "Bringing Up Baby" Tuesdays at 9.00pm. For those of you who haven't seen or heard of this programme the basic premise is to compare three methods of raising an infant which are:

• a routine based method based on the regime Dr Frederic Truby King from the 1950's


• the Childcare philosophy of Dr Spock from the 1960's


• the method of The Continuum Concept devised by Jean Liedloff.

Three experts, each an enthusiastic proponent of their chosen childcare method assist a family to implement one of the methods. (At this point I should tell you that my own parenting style is somewhere between that advocated by Dr Spock and Jean Liedloff with Jean Liedloff representing my ideals and Dr Spock representing my compromises. I am also very drawn to the work by John Mostyn Bowlby and William Sears who pioneered work on the Attachment Parenting philosophy which is broadly the same as The Continuum Concept, Frederic Leboyer who wrote "Birth Without Violence" and Dr Gowri Motha author of "The Gentle First Year" and Childbirth and parenting guru Shiela Kitzinger) This child centred approach contends that babies are born with innate instincts and developmental needs for constant physical contact with the mother primarily or other caregiver in her absence, e.g. being carried in a sling and co-sleeping, breast feeding on demand and being given immediate attention to its needs, e.g when crying, plus lots of love and affection. (Jean Liedloff developed her approach as a result of witnessing the natural parenting methods of Amazonian tribeswomen.) By receiving this high level of consistent nurturing and security, the baby will develop confidence and positive self esteem and a happy outlook. This is due to the fact that a babies brain development and emotional development begins at an incredibly young age, partly in response to the cortisol hormone or "stress hormone". Babies who are more stressed by for example, being left to cry or isolated and deprived of emotional and physical contact will be more likely to develop an emotional pattern of depression and fear which forms their basic character for life. Babies deprived of emotional warmth, security and physical contact (such as children neglected in Romanian orphanages, have been found, following MRI scans to have whole areas of their brain missing, due to the lack of the emotional cues that stimulate such brain and central nervous system growth and development. I have taken this information from Steve's Biddulph's "Raising Babies" and the research this is based on is credited to Dr Alan Schore (see http://www.mercola.com/2003/apr/9/child_care.htm )

Compare this then, if you will, to the style of parenting of devised by Dr Frederic Trudy King and determinedly championed by Claire Verity. This women guided the parents of a newborn to implement a strict and timed by the clock system of feeding every four hours, with night feeds to be dropped as soon as possible to minimise length of time parents' sleep is disrupted, to limit contact between baby and carers (mother, father etc) to a maximum of 10 minutes of cuddling per day, the baby sleeps in in a room alone from day one (never mind that this contravenes current advice on SIDS prevention.) and for the baby to spend several hours in the garden every day. Bad enough, but this (to my mind) evil monster of a woman insisted that the baby not be removed from its bed after 7.00pm under any circumstance and that the parents should ignore its cries (never mind dirty nappies, hunger, loneliness or fear for this poor poor baby who up till this point had known nothing but the comfort and safety and nourishment of its mothers womb), that the baby should be held away from the body when being fed and that the parents should not make eye contact with the baby (she actually said "Why do you need to look at it?") Through out the programme she referred to these innocent defenceless newborns as IT!!! The baby was wrapped in a blanket and put in the pram, placed in the garden to get fresh air (don't get me wrong, I have nothing against fresh air for babies but this astounded me) in the rain, for several hours ALONE Claire Verity actually CLOSED THE DOOR and stated "You don't need to listen to it crying". One incident that broke my heart was the older sister of the baby pleading with the dad to be able to give the baby a cuddle to be told by the father that they weren't allowed to. Ye Gods I despaired, even this child had more sense. At one point the mother in floods of tears wanted to go to her baby, as a mothers natural instinct would dictate (an instinct which is there for a reason), but she (both her and her husband being first-time parents) resisted on the authority of this vile woman who has no children and does not possess a maternal bone in her body. My rage has still not subsided.

Now I can understand the reason that this family chose to experience this method. Due to financial circumstances, the mother would need to return to work very soon. It just demonstrates my feeling that the pressure created by the cost of living and expectations for mothers to return to work and therefore require her baby to be raised by paid professionals, strangers who do not love your child, but are just doing their job is actively, is constructively and expertly damaging the development of healthy emotionally nourished children and strong family bonding. The whole basis of the Trudy King ( Who incidentally was a surgeon and also the inventor of baby formula and therefore largely responsible for the decline in popularity of breastfeeding) method is to sever the mother child bond and "train" the infant to fit around the parents routine, to change the parent's life as little as possible, to be CONVENIENT. If that's what prospective parents are looking for, my recommendation is to get a plant or robot instead. If you were to place an adult in isolation for long periods of time, condemn them to an existence devoid of stimulation, deprive them of physical or emotional contact, ration their food supply and subject them to high levels of fear and stress as a result, it would at best be considered a severe form of imprisonment and at worst torture. Ultimately this archaic and cruel system of childcare which is nearly 60 years old (It was also in the 50's, that wonderful era of modernisation, that Doctors decided that hospital births where women lay on their back were the way forward and bottle feeding was touted as the modern and best way to nourish infants, and that originated comments such as "you shouldn't cuddle the baby so much, you'll spoil her" and "haven't you weaned her yet? She'd sleep better if you gave her formula" and my favourite " sometimes you just need to let them cry, it does no harm, its good for their lungs" and a beautiful, sweet and delicate child's entrance to the world was greeted with violence of being hung upside down and slapped.) is damaging to these baby's biological and emotional development of the brain and central nervous system and I would think (although this is merely an opinion on my part) the endocrine system which regulates hormones. This is child abuse. Claire Verity CHARGES £1000 PER DAY to show parents how to abuse their kids and risk damaging them biologically and emotionally!

So who is Claire Verity? Channel 4's site had this to say:

"Claire Verity is a maternity nurse with 24 years' experience and a string of nannying qualifications. Claire revels in her moniker of 'Cruella de Vil' of the baby world and claims that, even though her methods are strict, she can guarantee 100% success. The method she has devised is based on Truby King's routine, which she learnt about during her maternity nurse training. Claire often has a clash of opinion with her clients, especially on her rule of not picking up and cuddling a baby too much. She says that breakthrough happens when suddenly the mothers see that their baby is no longer 'unmanageable' and that they have their lives back – it's then, she says, that they accept she has been right all along "

The web site

http://www.thebabyshow.co.uk/nec-birmingham/show-features/learn/sleeping-routines/

"CLAIRE VERITY – The Celebrity Baby Guru
Struggling to get your baby into a sleeping routine? Help is at hand from Claire Verity, who will be talking on The Comfort Pure Stage with Prima Baby on Sunday 13 May at 12 noon.
Claire Verity is a highly sought after baby expert, who has cared for a long list of babies of celebrities like Mick Jagger, Jerry Hall, Sting and Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits. Over a career spanning 22 years she has advised many people including Princess Diana about baby care. Claire will be speaking about her no nonsense approach which has babies sleeping through the night at eight weeks old.Claire is also currently filming a TV series 'Bringing up Baby' for Channel 4."

Sounds wonderful doesn't she? What I find equally worrying as the fact that this woman is allowed to promote and teach these damaging ideas is that this programme was made in the first place. Reality television for all its good and bad points, should not be allowed to exploit and potentially damage the bonding process and an infants development permanently as "an experiment" merely for casual entertainment. I am all for promoting child centred parenting advocated by experts in attachment parenting / continuum concept (of which there is very little mainstream exposure) and I can see many good points in the relaxed and flexible approach of the Dr Spock method that supports the mother and father and tells them that they innately know what is good for them and their child and supports them to trust their instincts in a relaxed way providing their child with warmth and love, but to inflict Claire Verity and her hideous and damaging ideology on the newborns of first time parents who faced with the authority of "24 years of experience as a maternity nurse and nanny" may not have the confidence to stand against or even question her methods (what I saw told me that the parents were not entirely happy with this method) is unforgivable. If you saw the programme, then I doubt you need convincing. If you didn't I hope I have provided enough information for you to consider signing this petition. Channels should know that this type of programme is unacceptable. http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/parentingshows/#detail . Had the programme been called "A Shocking Expose of Claire Verity Who Teaches Parents To Neglect Their Child For The Sake Of Convenience And Charges Them £1000 Per Day For The Privilege" then my post may have been entirely supportive of Channel 4. Sadly it was not

It took me the best part of a week to decide how to write this post. Once I opened the valve, I decide to go with it and vent my spleen. I hope you don't mind. I have to say I haven't felt this angry about a television programme for a very long time and writing this has been cathartic. I glad I got that out of my system!