It's Ezzo Week 2006!

*drumroll, please*

Ladies and gentleman, boys and girls, moms and pops. . . Welcome to the third annual blogosphere Ezzo Week!

Gary Ezzo's Growing Families International National Leadership & Alumni Conference* is being held in Dallas, Texas** from July 13-15, 2006.

In recognition of this annual event, here at TulipGirl we will be featuring posts related to Gary Ezzo and his parenting teachings.

Feel free to jump in to the conversation here! Blog your own experiences and thoughts about Ezzo parenting. Or, pop on over to the AwareParent discussion board.

Why the hoopla? What's the excitement? This explains a little of why we make a big to-do over Ezzo week.

So come one, come all--it's Ezzo Week 2006!

* That's a mouthful, huh, Hank?
** The actual conference location not publicized online, as the media is not welcome. A reporter visited the 2004 Detroit conference. However, I believe it may be located at Legacy Church.

This post is part of the Ezzo Week 2006 series, raising awareness about the concerns with "philosophy" of parenting promoted by Gary Ezzo.

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Comments

Maybe in years to come you won't need to mark Ezzo week due to lack of interest in his methods, lets hope so!

Do you think he is losing popularity in recent years?
Posted by: Sheena at July 11, 2006 01:35 PM

Sheena, there is a couple at my church who had 21 people at their last offering of the core program of Growing Kids or whatever name it currently goes by. Also, at my local Christian bookstore, there was a new shipment of Ezzo's books. The interest is still there.
Posted by: Kim in ON at July 11, 2006 03:09 PM

Interest definitely is still there, so kudos to you for pointing out the very real and destructive errors attached to this organization.
Posted by: Robert at July 11, 2006 04:56 PM

I've really appreciated all of the information you and others have put together concerning the Ezzos and Pearls. It has caused me to re-evaluate my own parenting!
Thanks!
Posted by: Mist at July 12, 2006 07:34 PM

I've heard many negative things about this group/organization/ministry/whatever they are, so I'm glad you take this opportunity to shine this light on it.

I decided as a very young parent (probably about 21 years ago) the only "parenting" book I needed, was my grandma. Any question I had about the practical issues of raising kids, grandma had the answers to. :)

Maybe grandma should start a parenting ministry? ;)

SDG,
Carla
Posted by: Carla Rolfe at July 13, 2006 12:48 PM

I wish I had never read the Parent Directed Feeding materials. I always expected to breastfeed at least well into the first year. Almost 9 months into Mommyhood, I realize both the Babywise and Baby Whisperer so-called common sense approaches (According to their authors) probably caused our failure. They certainly led to guilt instead of freedom in parenting, and they did not adequately address the issue of difficult latching, poor sucking, or being a single Mom for 7 of baby's 1st 8 weeks while hubby has to be away. (I half-jokingly say I will need a PDF recovery course before having #2. I will probably go to LLL, whose advice I was brainwashed to ignore by Ezzo and Hogg's books).

Thankfully, our precious little girl is now healthy and you would never know she started out "FTT".
Posted by: Lauren at July 14, 2006 03:34 PM

Carla, the older I get the more I realize I should (and should have) listened to my parents more. *grin* When I was younger I *thought* that I listened to their wisdom, but let much of it go in one ear and out the other.

Mist, thank you. I've found that one of the reasons I continue writing about this sort of thing is that it causes me to re-think, re-evaluate, and re-focus in the area of marriage and parenting.

Sheena, a few years ago it seemed as if Ezzo was losing popularity. There were major indications of that (downsizing the business, for one). Recently though it seems to be gaining in popularity again, accepted by churches, and usually thoughtful Christians being swayed by it. So, I don't know. . . I don't have hard-and-fast numbers to indicate anything.

Thanks for the encouragement, Robert.

Kim, I appreciated reading what you most recently wrote on your site about Ezzo parenting.
Posted by: TulipGirl at July 14, 2006 03:34 PM

We were introduced to the GKGW program through a family in our church back in 1992. I had an 8 y/o and a toddler then and was pregnant with my third child. My husband and I took the video classes, I still have the workbook (for evidence and reference). I regret every last bit of "advice" I put into practice from that toxic program. It's patriarchal, selfish, twisted, and unBiblical to boot. Even the title is arrogant: Growing Kids GOD's Way, like God placed a burning potty chair in front of Gary Ezzo and spoke to him from it. In 1999 a writer from Ladies Home Journal had read some posts of mine from an AOL message board and they interviewed us as part of an article they were doing on the Ezzo program. They had several families featured, both pro and con. Guess which side we were on? ;) I was also interviewed by the Washington Post and did a bit on the local Fox TV news to spread the word how traumatizing and dangerous Ezzo's childcare manuals are. By the time 48 Hours called for an interview, I was weary of telling and reliving that time of our lives and I declined. *sigh*

I've been out of the loop for many years now. I left the church, fundamentalism, and maybe Christianity, too, I'm not sure... and have moved on both spiritually and as a mother, so I was a bit surprised and saddened to see that Ezzo's stuff is still finding an audience. I am glad there are many taking a stand against it, though, as it flies in the face of sound science as well as sound Christian theology.

Gah. Dredging up some old stuff here for me. :(

Keep up the fight.

Posted by: Sophia at August 2, 2006 05:09 PM

Hey, excited to find this site. I am a birth and parenting educator (for 13 years now) and, yes, Baby wise is still around. There is a brochure online that I download and give to my classes, spelling out the very dangerous teachings from Ezzo. Most of the time, the parents give me a blank stare when mentioning GKGW, but last night, before I had given out the brochure, we were discussing colic and crying, and one mom having her second child said, "Have you ever heard of this great book, Babywise? It saved my life." I thought I would throw up. It was hard to tread the path between being respectful and kind to her, and not letting erroneous information into my class. I focused on comments she made about scheduling and hopefully defused this bomb. I was filling in for another teacher, who will be back to this class next week, so I called the teacher to let her know that she had an Ezzophile in the class, and when she does her breastfeeding section, she may run into some flack with this class member. I was also a member of a church that touted the materials, but I let the church bookstore manager know they had been refuted, and he immediately took them off the shelves. The more I learn about this program, the worse it sounds.
Posted by: Wendy at October 10, 2006 12:36 PM

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