Hi all

Thought I'd add one more cautionary tale concerning 20/20.

Some of you may remember a story they did, hmmm, 5 years ago or so (?) about
trying to get an 18 month old to sleep through the night. They showed a
couple Ferberizing said child. The mom sat and rocked herself on her bed
looking at the clock while listening to poor Michael screaming in the other
room. Michael finally gives up, throws all his stuffed animals to one end of
the crib (what Ferber calls "arranging his space" in his analysis of the
video), and goes to sleep. (Okay, my bias is showing....)

I wrote a letter to 20/20 afterwards suggesting that they were asking the
wrong question--it's not "how do I get my child to sleep through the night?"
but, instead, "how do I meet the nighttime needs of my child?" I mentioned
the family bed as an option and suggested they do a followup show.

I took the letter to an LLL Leader meeting and got at least a dozen
signatures on the letter (we signed as individuals, no mention made of LLL).

A few weeks later I received a call from one of the producers. Seems they
wanted to do the family bed show and since I had so many signatures on my
letter they thought they might be able to come to Atlanta to film the thing.
She wanted to know how many of those people on that list slept with their
kids. "I don't know." Did any of them sleep with "older" children? "I don't
know." I tried to explain that we were comfortable with the idea that
parents will do what is right for their situation and that we didn't sit
around asking "is little (big?) Johnny STILL sleeping in your bed?" She kept
pushing for names of folks who had "older" kids in the bed with them. I got
the distinct impression she was hoping I'd say, "oh yes, Mary has her
teenage daughter and son sleeping in between her and her hubby all night
long and they all sleep in the nude...." She finally gave up.

The show was eventually done and used folks from Dr. Sears' practice, I
believe, and as I recall, it was pretty tolerable for a mainstream show, but
not necessarily what I would have liked to have seen!!

Anyway, I'd be cautious with them as well.

Melissa Vickers, IBCLC
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Huntingdon, Tennessee