Attachment Parenting

[oldhippymum]

Just wondered if anyone else is interested in attachment parenting- although it wasn't called this when i had my first 13 years ago!!

Has anyone else resd the Continuum concept by Jean Liedloff and Three in a bed- Deborah Jackson?

Its all about parenting by being very child led and keeping your child close to you, ie extended breast feeding, co sleeping, no smacking or shouting, not leaving babies to cry etc?

When i had my first two sons 13 and 11 years ago I knew a few people who parented in this way, but since having my daughter 7, and 3rd child 17 months, I can't seem to find anyone else who parents in this way-my fault for being greedy and having too many children i guess!

then i discovered the internet!!!!!!!

Anyone else parent like me?

or am i alone in a world of Gina Ford- NOT THAT I HAVE A PROBLEM WITH GINA FORD TO EACH THEIR OWN Maybe I'm the only old hippy left on the block!!

youknowwhat your approach sounds perfect and everything I aspire to!

So what are you if yor kid goes in a cart rather than a pushchair?

i thought i was the only one! I had my son in March and for the first few nights i fed him, he fell asleep, then i pu him in his crib next to the bed, but he would cry so id take him back into bed and feed more... until one night i fell asleep. I felt so guilty! After that i felt cruel shoving him from a warm bed to his crib, alone, so I kept him in with me. It was like a dirty secret! He is perfectly safe... I am a light sleeper and wake at every noise, and have a kingsize bed so he has nearly 1/2 so he'd have to roll about 10 times to fall out! All id heard about bedtimes was putting them to bed awake, letting them cry 5 minutes, then 10... but didnt want to do that. Being only 19 myself I dont know any other mums, but in a way it was a good thing because I didnt have the whole "copycat" thing. I just did what I thought felt natural and am pleased its a bona fide way of bringing up babies! Everyone comments on how happy my baby is and its great to know its not a bad things to let him feed on demand - even after 20 minutes!

Good for you quootie, carry on doing what feels right rather than what you feel everyone else thinks you should be doing and you won't go far wrong.

i ve found a happy balance between attatchment and the stricter style of parenting. my dd2 sleeps in her own bed as i worry about squashing her plusi cant see how you can have a 'healthy' relationship with your partner when your babys always in your bed.if my daughter cries i pick her up and give her a cuddle but i put her back down when she settles (at bed/nap time) if shes awake then she gets held as much as she wants. i used to let my older daughter sleep in the same bed as us and rock her to sleep and it caused no ends of problems, so this suits me better, each to their own though.

hi there

i am a fan of attachment parenting but i also work - full time. i would like to be able to work part time in the future but at the moment it is not feasible... but my childminder also practises this altho she doesn't know it but she always responds to her needs and is very connected to her... for her (we are malaysian) this is just the way it is, the asian way.

when i am with her i try my best to practice AP. however i can tell you from experience the effect of working full time: a baby has to attach to someone to feel secure, and because the childminder provides that security and love, she becomes very attached to her too. when she is with me at home it is me, and when she is at their house it is her. However at 'transition time' when i come to get her inthe evenings, she becomes confused and cries as (i imagine) she wants me yet she does not want to be separated from the childminder. so we have had quite a few teary episodes in the car although she does stop and cheer up fairly quickly. children adapt tho, because they have to and i have not seen any ill effects from this although on my side it is heartbreaking to see her not wanting to leave the childminders house, and i think because we both love her a lot, there is a bit of 'rivalry' and jealousy between us...

Very AP here too. When I hadd dd I didn't know it had a name I just followed my instincts and when she was just under a year old I found the label and realised that is what I was doing.

Bit of a round peg in a square hole where I live though so I post on other sites with AP forums and feel abit less of a freak.

Sashasmama you sound so tuned in to your daughter's feelings, really lovely to hear.

That's what AP is for me I think, looking at your little one and wondering about how something might make them/you feel - rather than doing something without considering the implications on them. Think its as much about how attached (or in tune) you are with your child as the other way round. Maybe how empathetic you are able to be, and how you respond to that. So setting boundaries is quite appropriate and very ap if its done in a way that recognises how your child will respond to the message you're giving them and tailored appropriately, not just with the thought of what the boundary is and whether the child understands it.
Children are more than blank sheets that you can put your own imprint on, they've got a pattern underneath already. WIth ap I try not to make my imprint clash with ds's pattern!

Oooh how deep.

I love THe COntinuum COncept". I think that woman is a genious. I have huge issues with my mother and my childhood, and that book has helped me to come to terms with everything in my life. Considering the climate in which it was written (1970s), I think it is so insightful. I try to live by the principles of <strong>not</strong> child centred, responsive parenting, clear boundaries.(Some misled people believe attachment parenting is making the child the centre of the universe and no limits, when in fact its the <span class="italic">opposite</span>. Empathy is the main concept of AP. Deborah Jackson is fantastic too. I havenT read Three in a Bed, but "Letting Go as Children Grow" is really good, and is based on the Continuum COncept.

It all sounds great, and if it creates happy kids then even better.

But I'm not so sure about the term "attachment parenting" as it sounds like if you don't do it you're not attached.

My son is adopted so no breastfeeding, as we live in Singapore where maternity leave is short and since he was placed at short notice I was only able to have 2 months off (although I only work 2 days a week now), and since I have a bad back and a recent hernia (and he's bloody huge!) he goes in the pushchair as I can't carry him around for long.

But he's fed on demand, played with and cuddled constantly, being weaned using BLW, and hell would freeze over before I'd let him "cry it out". He's very attached to us, but also happy to be left with the babysitter when I work, having been used to her from an early age.

I think every baby/family is different, but I wish there could be a different name for "full" attachment parenting to make the rest of us feel less inadequate.

Maybe "lentil weaver parenting" ?

Reading all this is making me feel very guilty about the controlled crying I did when my dds were 9 months, it was rather a watered down version as I hated letting them cry for long, but at the time I just couldn't see any other way of getting any sleep.

If I could do it again, I would take baby and me to the spare room and get a decent night's sleep. But I was always too worried that would damage my marriage (didn't make much difference, we separated for a year anyway).

So help is need from AP fans, what do I do now with my 7 year old dd who is so anxious that she won't go upstairs by herself, calls out for me if she can't see me in the house, won't go to sleep at night unless I promise to stay upstairs and check on her every 2 minutes, etc etc.

Isn't this an advert for AP if ever you read one???

(Must point out that in all other aspects of parenting I have always been quite AP)

hellish, me too!

One thing i regret was not doing the co sleeping thing as i think it would have saved me a lot of sleepless nights. but now she is 16 months, and only wakes up once and is used to her cot so it worked out ok. But when she was born, the one thing that resonated around us was the 'make sure she is ina cot and make sure she is out of your room before six months or you'll never get them out!' so we dutifully put her in her huge cot every night and i woke up 5, 6, 7, 8, times a night to her crying for us... then i read dr spock and ferber and tried the controlled crying thing, also half heartedly because i couldn't stand the crying, and of course it didn't work and i was despairing. luckily then i found a book called no cry sleep solutions and a thread here on it, and that was the end of the cc thing.

i still wonder if she will ever sleep thru, but my sister said to me that her son was also like that but she continued to feed him and go to him, and he naturally began to sleep thru after he turned two... sooooo fingers crossed...

after reading all the different theories, i am more convinced than ever that AP principles are the most sound. i am glad i found this thread with other working AP mums like me. i too was feeling pretty guilty about working full time...

hellish, i am meeting a friend tonight who is recently divorced with a six year old child. i know she too went thru a very insecure stage recently so i will ask her for advice for you!

re working. i have worked and still considered myself to be APing. I worked because I had to, for a brief period, until we managed to stabilise my finances, otherwise we would have lost our house.

Jean Liedhoff I like in parts. But I have reservations, she seems to me to be very keen on everyone knowing their place and, oddly, creates an adult/child distinction. The children know not to talk when the adults are talking, for example. This freaks me a little, if I am honest. I don't want my kids thinking that they can only talk if adults aren't talking!

Prefer John Holt, Dr Sears (to extent), Alfie Kohn, deborah jackson.

I tend to think liedhoff is one of the hardest parenting gurus to follow, and cannot divorce this from the fact that she has no kids, and no psychology (say) training, she has just seen a group of people who seem to be happy and extrapolated from there, really, with no real appreciation of the stresses faced by parents in the west.

sheS a psychotherapist, and Im sure that was how she managed to make the connection between various neuroses and parenting-styles.

Jean Leidorff did not write Continuum Concept as a parenting book. She wrote it as more of an anthropology journal/book. it was APers in the US who adopted her book into their bibliography.

I initially only read Leidorff because of the anthropology aspect.

I grew up in a place which wasn't the end of the world but you could see it from there. (Aldous Huxley actually wrote that line about this place.) I am also part Mayan and many of my childhood friends were pure or mostly pure Mayan. I can say that Mayan children do 'know their place' possibly almost in the style that Leidorff describes but the Mayan children and Mayan society does not see it as a negative thing. It is hard to interpret and define these things without viewing it through the lens of our own (Western) culture.

At the time I grew up, Mayan children in Mayan villages did not have corporal punishment in schools, eventhough it was practiced in schools in the non-Maya towns. The reason being that Maya children were culturally never ever smacked and smacking in schools made the children physically and emotionally sick. So one enlightened thing that the gov't did at the time was not to allow smacking etc. What i am saying is that there are other culturally sanctioned ways to teach children how to be a part of society. I think Leidorff meant that because children are carried all the time, they are also observing and taking part in their society all the time. Hence 12 - 18 mo old toddlers observe 3 and 4 yr olds never interrupting adult conversation so they learn to do the same, without the need to sanction a 'negative' behaviour.

[[http://www.continuum-concept.org/reading/whosInControl.html here is an article by the author addresses one widely held misconception of being child centred.]

ack! here is the linkie

Thanks sashasmama - any advice from your friend most welcome. I try very hard to be child led on dealing with her fears. eg. I will stay upstairs if she needs me, talk things through for hours etc, she has never really been in childcare, almost always with me.

On the positive side, she has no problem going to school and very happily goes off to playdates etc (sorry I'm living in Canada and the language is catching) It all seems to centre around bedtime and being in the house.

I'm afraid I do struggle in the middle of the night, sometimes she'll wake and I'll sit in her room for hours waiting for her to go back to sleep (because she's scared if I leave the room). It's then that I lose my patience have have to say no, I'm going back to bed.

i agree re the child centredness. Holt is good on this. He gets round child centredness by making no distinction between adult and child, it is more "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need". A child who is competant to handle knives, should be preparing food, for example. But kids should also have an equal role in the family, making decisions about finance, etc.

and I say what you are saying, kiki, about the western culture stuff, but I do live in a western culture, as do my kids, and I do like a lot of aspects of it if I am honest. I am not comforable with segregation of children and adults in this way, really.

Oh and I am pretty sure she wasn't a psychotherapist when she wrote the book. Nor, I think, was she a trained anthropologist. But in the nicest possible way, a psychotherapist need have absolutely no training in psychology, its a title you give yourself.

I don't disagree with much of how her books have been interpreted and utilised.

oh and that article is the one that really unsettles me

I remember trying to do stuff with a baby in a sling. you can't really.

1. you are exhausted a lot of the time with a young baby.

2. it is rather hard to do household chores with a baby strapped to you. i have tried.

etc

this is why i say shes obv not a parent. its the practicalities of life with a young baby in a western society that shw has no insight into.

hellish. my friend said she just gave in and slept with her for a few months and after a while she just decided she wanted to sleep on her own again... my dd at 16 months is also going thru a real insecure stage right now where she will wake at night and want me to stay in her room too. then daddy went overseas for a week and when he came back she decided she didn't want him at all and now everytime he tries to feed her or comfort her she just bursts into tears and wails mamaaaaaaamaamaaa... oh the joys. i hope it doesn't last!

hellish, some asian parents will say there is a 'spirit' in the house that may be 'playing' with the child because they believe that children below 6/7 are innocent enough to see the other world...! it may not be so but there may be some other sort of monster that she has made up in her head that is frightening her about nighttime and the upstairs... maybe you can try to talk to her about her fears?... or maybe if you just allow her to be extra clingy for a little while she will just sort it out herself eventually?... good luck!

this is all VERY interesting, i have not heard of continuum concept before... will go and look at the link now, thanks!

you are right there too, re last post. could you do back carries from an early age or were you scared to do it? I think that one is an essence for tiny babies. Mayan back carries start from birth so i was surprised to hear about Maya Wrap slings but laughed because it wasn't what i imagined they were. And they weren't. I can't see the tumpline carries catching on in babywearing circles. The difficulties of looking after a baby and getting on with things is why the role of siblings, aunts, uncles,cousins, etc or just neighbourhood kids do a lot of babysitting and carrying around of babies for parents. That is something that we have sadly lost and need when we have small children and babies. Not long before i left home, a woman who had lots of kids herself adopted a child who was conspicuously from another ethnic group. It looked strange to have her kids always carrying around this baby who was obviously not their blood relation but was their baby brother.