Alright darling, it’s time for beddy-byes!
No, no dear…you mustn’t cry! Mother and Father have had such a long day. Frankly, Mother just can’t take it any longer.
I’m counting to five and if you haven’t stopped crying Mother will be forced to bring out the Crib Sleeper.
Oh no! Now you’re crying even harder! Tsk, tsk…the Crib Sleeper it is then! Oh well…Mother gave you a chance and you blew it!
There, there. I don’t know what all this fuss is about. Why, you look snug as a bug in a rug! No…that’s doesn’t seem quite right. Why would a bug be snug in a rug anyway? A rug is far too large for a bug. I’m afraid Mother doesn’t know the answer to that one.
Now, now…no more tears. Off to dreamland you go! Don’t worry…Mother will be right here when you wake up in the morning.
Oh, now you’ve started crying all over again! Honestly darling, Mother just doesn’t know what to do with you sometimes…
“Tie ‘em in and keep ‘em warm?”
I hope the next page is a pattern for a crochet feeding tube. “Bind ‘em up and fill ‘em up!”
… all from American Thread Co.’s Abu Ghraib Nursery Collection.
Well, it would have to be a crocheted feeding-tube COVER.
Hey, how come we haven’t seen one of those yet?
Maybe it’s just me, but that child looks a bit unnatural anyway– kind of like a mini-Linda Blair…
Maybe they’ve got her tied in so tight so her head stops spinning around.
Prepares girls for burqas, I guess.
Oh my God, that thing is terrifying.
The blanket’s pretty evil-looking, too.
So, like, what happens if, say, little Susie is a bed wetter??
Yikes! Any normal kid would look bugged-eyed too if they had to endure constriction like that. How in the world would she turn over in her sleep?
Oh. My. God. I’ve never actually seen one of these, but they could be the secret reason for crib deaths in America.
A design department had to approve this pattern, and then an editor, and then a publisher. This must be the Greatest American Secret ever!
I’ve personally known mothers who gave their kids cold medicine to make them sleep soundly until morning. One even gave her son an adult dose and had trouble waking him up the next morning. She would kill for this blanket.
holy crap!!
I don’t even have kids and that’s the scariest thing I think I’ve ever seen….
From the Ludwig Wittgenstein Tiny Tots Collection.
A wonderful example of quackery advertising ephemera if I’ve ever seen one…
I think I need to learn how to knit.
What an awful awful thing. I can’t even find anything humorous about it because it’s just blatant child abuse. Terrible.
O
Isn’t that kid too old to be in a crib anyhow?
Yep, that kid is 1 and 1/2 to 2. This ‘blanket treatment’ is less about warmth than it is about keeping your toddler strapped into the crib! It is, indeed, child abuse.
I’m listening to your podcast as I read all your blogs and I am finding both hilarious! My mom had patterns like these and your ironic commentary brings them all to life. Can’t wait to share this with her.
Thanks for sharing your wit and wisdom – very fun!
JOY
ok that’s just scary!
This one isn’t funny at all, it’s just child abuse plain and simple. I reccomend taking this one off TODAY.
Geesh……that is the problem with America today. Too many people have forgotten where their funny bone is. All these wonderful ladies are doing is showing what was available in patterns in OUR past. To read anything more into it is idiotic. The reason our children are falling SOOOOO far behind other countries is that we are so intent in not hurting little “Johnies” feelings that we have forgotten that sometimes children need to fail to learn to acheive. I hope the Threadbared ladies don’t listen to you lunatics and take this off.
Way to go!!! I personally love your wit!
What’s all the fuss? I slept in one of these as a child and I’m pretty normal. Except for the bedwetting, sleepwalking, thumb sucking and the homicidal rages, almost completely normal!
As someone who had to live with his sister and 3-year-old nephew for a year, all I can say is:
Do they make them for larger children, and where can I get one? Serious! You know how the natives have those papoose things, right? BEST IDEA EVER. Strap ‘em in, hang ‘em on the wall, free to go to the bathroom or take the garbage can full of stinky diapers to the garbage chute. GENIUS.
What makes it child abuse, exactly?
I’m sure all the mothers who knitted this monstrosity for their kids back in the ’40s or whatever would disagree. This is hardly on the level of the crap that *truly* abusive parents do to their kids.
Ok, you REALLY don’t understand why tying a child down all night is abusive? :-O
Maddieline, I agree with you about kids needing to fail in order to learn. This, however, is a whole different thing.
No reason for the threadbared girls to take it off, though. The fun of this site is seeing random weird crap like this!
maybe they didn’t have central heating?
Why, it’s the Joan Crawford baby comfort. She put her son in something like this to keep him in his bed…and he was a lot older.
And, there is that whole “put your baby to sleep on his back” to avoid SIDS thing…this would surely guarantee the little bugger wouldn’t turn.
Dude! Mommie Dearest would have scooped this up in a heart beat. Didn’t she strap her son Christopher into bed every nigh with some type of harness contraption?
First, I love your book!
Second, this is really, really funny! Definitely in the “What were they thinking” category. And as for parenting then and now, you can buy what is basically a bundling bag for infants, a fleece “sleeping bag” that zips up around the kid’s neck to keep them safe and warm at night. At least this one leaves the arms free for extra flailing.
Hmm. This little girl looks a LOT like me at that age. My mother was also a sadistic wench. I’m going to have to ask some questions and at the very least get some royalties.
My mother used to brag that she had a similar thing she had bought, it had a slit for my neck, and fit tightly around the mattress. She claimed it was to keep me covered. She also used a harness and leash for me after I could walk. I was an only child…thank goodness. I turn 60 soon, so I survived, sort of
The poor tyke could pass as the surviving sibling of one of Edward Gorey’s “Gashlycrumbe Tinies”: T is for Trixie, who transfixed her captor with a baleful stare after being tied to a crib. No offense to anyone out there named Trixie. Seriously.
I guess you COULD justify a blanket that couldn’t bunch up around little Judy-Ann’s face, maybe, but the strait-jacket at the top???? Plus, do you know any kids that age that would ALLOW themselves to be strapped in that? I wouldn’t even stay in a car seat for above a half hour at 18 months. My (evil!) grandmother made me sleep in a crib at her house until I was 3. I have vivid memories of waiting for her to leave the room, carefully climbing out of the (lead) painted crib, and making a nest in her faux fur. Yep, she’s an EVIL CRAFTER. She owns most of these crazy patterns!
Surely this thing was meant for children suffering though an itchy illness, like chicken pox. Surely…..
If you object to the post, then it has gone completely over your head.
The kid’s just going to untie it as soon as mom leaves the room.
It’s like a crocheted Skinner box.
From the same mindset that conceived of this:
http://home.earthlink.net/~bryantyson/sparties.htm
that sparties thing is truly evil!! It is hilarious to see what people will do to avoid dealing with crap though. I can just see the mother of the tie ‘em down contraption also keeping her kid is a spartie, and every friday, just before the guests come, putting baby on the lawn for a good hosing out. I think I escaped the public humiliation a lot of other kids got put through, always dressed really prettily, and hardly ever had to wear the same thing as my sister. lucky me
While my American eyes see the humor, these bags are still used. A friend from France who was living here for a few years brought this type of blanket bag (ready-made cloth version) from Paris for her 1 and 3 year olds because she couldn’t find them here. She swore by it for a warm, cozy night’s sleep and her kids climbed in willingly. Chacun à son goût.
Arghhh! Ya know, this used to be considered the best way to teach your kids to behave. And look at how THAT generation turned out!
That Sparties thing isn’t for real, is it?
O_O What the hell?? I know the importance of keeping a child warm, but jumpin’ Jesuits, that thing is weird! What if the kid is a side-sleeper? What if she wets the bed? What if there’s a fire and you have to grab her in a hurry and run? Why not just put the child in warmer pajamas? Also, those ties could be a strangling hazard, I should think. I’m not surprised that strait-jackets-as-bedwear never really caught on.
Strait jackets as DAYwear, on the other hand…yeah, I could see a use for that.
Geez, Blanche would never have gotten rescued if Baby Jane had put her in one of these. She wouldn’t have been able to move to knock anything over. Help. Indeed, what if there’s a fire or something?
It is pretty funny though.