Parenting Mysteries: The Big Schedule Debate - Reality or Hype?

Pick up any parenting book, and you will undoubtedly find a chapter on how to put a baby on a schedule. Some of the suggestions are rather useful and will result in you and your child having some great experiences. Other ideas are less realistic and trying to follow them will fill your house with loud wails - yours - and stubborn cries - the child's.

Before you even consider the big scheduling issue, ask yourself why you want to put your baby on a schedule. If the baby is an only child, you are not working, and do not really have to be at specific places at specific times, why does your baby need a rigid schedule? On the other hand, if you are working, and your child will most likely go to daycare, you will need to get her or him accustomed to a schedule of events.

Yet some parents take the idea of scheduling to such a degree that their idea of a schedule reads like the Swiss train schedule rather than a time line for a flesh and blood infant. Also, keep in mind that trying to put a newborn on a schedule is like trying to harness the wind - it is not possible. Oh sure, at the hospital the nurses' were telling you to feed every three hours - on the hour - and not to do snacks in between. Yet in reality this will not work for your home. At the hospital it has to work, because the nurses are probably looking after a large number of infants and cannot feed on demand, so a schedule is born of necessity and observed with rigor, yet at home the situation is different.

Your infant will let you know when it is time to change the diaper, feed her, and hold her. Do not try to parent by some imaginary stop watch but instead find a rhythm that works for your and your child. The same is true for beginning a schedule. It needs to fit you and your family, and no two families are alike. If you are taking sister to school in the morning, then baby will need to get up before sister, but it can be an hour earlier or half an hour, depending on how tired baby is. Do not force the infant to get up simply for the sake of getting up! Once again, find a workable rhythm rather than a rigid schedule, and you will find peace and harmony in your home.