I have been getting the impression more and more lately that people have been adopting the AP label because they believe that to do so they

1) have to be simply be “attached” to their child;

2) attend to their child’s “needs”¦

The problem is that the words “attachment parenting”  automatically makes us assume that the opposite of AP is being “detached”which is simply not the case…

All children are attached to their parents and most parents do what they think is best for their children (I can’t say “all” because I watch the news and it is simply not true)…

Most parents, AP or NOT believe that they are responding to what they think are their baby’s needs… What it comes down to is what they think their child needs, if they are really listening to their child (or hearing what they want to hear) and also what they expect from their child….

What has been bothering me is that more and more people call themselves AP and don’t even agree that the Sears’s 7 B’s are Ideals and seem to only believe that there is only one important one which is “Balance” (therefore giving them the permission to forgo all of the rest in order to maintain balance even if it means CIO, sleeping in a different room, formula feeding, never wearing baby etc)

It is true that you do not have to do all of the 7 b’s to be a Attached Parent but they do remain the ideals and they should be considered and tried as much (and even more) then anything else, they should be the first step and be the natural step…. (The 7 B’s for those who don’t know are these)

• Birth Bonding
• Breastfeeding
• Babywearing
• Bedding Close to Baby (family bed or different beds in the same room)
• Belief in the language of your baby’s cries
• Beware of Baby-Trainers
• Balance

http://www.askdrsears.com/html/10/t130300.asp

However, though the term “Attachment Parenting” started with Dr Sears, it has grown beyond that and has become a philosophy of its own.

This philosophy is to do what comes naturally and instinctively, and the 7 B’s (among others) are part of this instictive reaction, but to do so you must get rid of the expectations that society has put on our children.

We all know why and how these actions work and how they are important in building a relationship of trust and attachment…and there are people that struggle in trying to be AP and fail, and some that just can’t understand AP at all, so what is the difference… we does it work and make sense for some but not for others…?
By design children are Dependant for the first few years of their lives. There is no way around this, there is no denying it…

By Design, 99% of women CAN breastfeed, however, we have not had the experience of learning about breastfeeding from our surroundings because our culture has sexualized the breast and believe that nursing a child shouldn’ be seen. The natural age of a child weaning is between 2.5 and 7 years of age…. weaning a child is most often a result of what we believe is culturally acceptable (for the mom or the child) Sure, “extended” breastfeeding is’t for everyone but why it isn’t for everyone mostly comes from what we believe is culturally acceptable, what we have grown up knowing and is not what we have come to expect from a child after a certain age (3 months, 6 months, 1 year, 2 years etc)…

By design, children most often rather be parented to sleep and sleep through the night when they are ready to do so and some may not be ready to be independent in sleep until much later then we would expect. Our culture however, seems to put the emphasis on teaching babies to self-soothe and see sleeping through the night at a young age as a goal. And even go so far as making it not only the goal but saying that the opposite is unhealthy for the child. If children were really designed to sleep through the night at such a young age then there wouldn’t be so much effort to train them to do so… or so much money made with books and baby-training techniques… When brought into bed with the parents, like we as a species have always done, both parent and child get more sleep, and the child learns by example how to fall asleep when waking at night… For some this happens earlier on… but for most it is much later and it is normal.

By design babies want to be held and want to be in our arms…  Strollers have only been around since 1733 and even then they were only accessible to the richest of the population until the 1930’s and then only became popular to the general public in the 50’s… with another boom in the 70’s with the umbrella stroller… Before strollers, we held our babies, we did so with our arms or we used pieces of cloth to do so. In holding a baby and wearing them they learn to regulate their temperature, learn balance, cry less (proven to cry 50% less), have less or no Colic, are close enough that we can recognize and respond to their cues quickly, etc… in societies that never use strollers women learn how to wear babies when they themselves are children, they learn by example (like they learn breastfeeding, sewing, cooking etc). Most of the time when people say their children don’t like to be worn it is because they don’t know how to use the carrier and become stressed when trying which the child in turn reflects…. they often also try at bad times (when baby is already upset, tired or hungry) and often don’t start at birth…

All of this goes for saying… AP is a return to the roots of what parenting has always been… and a return to what comes naturally instead of what is culturally sanctioned… and there are many cultures that still have AP as the normal way of parenting…

If you really believe that a child should be sleeping through the night at a certain age, should not be held too much or should no longer be held much after a certain age, if you believe that breastfeeding shouldn’t be continued after a certain age, or that formula is just as good as breastfeeding, if you believe that some children just need to be trained to sleep, if you believe that their cries mean nothing at certain times of the day, if you don’t think that the simple need for comfort in the middle of the night is as important as a physical need after a certain month of age, if you believe that there are just some times that a baby really cries for no reason and that there are times that it is best to leave them alone when they do, If you don’t think you have the time to listen and to respond to your child’s every cue… then the parenting path named Attachment Parenting may simply not be for you, and will probably be more of a struggle then anything else. As much as you may want to work, and believe in the ideas and philosophy, it will not work for you easily if you don’t put aside these cultural expectations…

That doesn’t mean that you can’t use the tools that are often associated with Attachment Parenting (such as wearing, co-sleeping etc) and that they won’t work for you throughout stages of your parental life, but they won’t give you the results that you may expect…(and note I didn’t put breastfeeding in that because breastfeeding should always be done no matter what Parenting path you take)

However, If you are not only willing, but able, to let go of what society tells us is the “normal” and “healthy” way to parent, and truly listen to your child and give your child all of the benefits of the doubt, then not only will Attachment Parenting work but it will be far from the struggle and will become as easy and natural as breathing.

Of course, there are times that we are bombarded with messages or advice from others that are not AP, or we can’t help but fall back on the ideas that we have been fed all of our lives, and it is in these times that we need the support of other Attachment Parents and it is why it is important to be able to use the label of Attachment Parenting…

On the board that I Host the last few weeks have been bombarded with “Sleep Issues” and many people coming and saying that CIO can be OK because it is doing what is “best” for baby and mom…

This infuriates me…. There is NO WAY that CIO can be an appropriate response…

A mom there was saying how discouraged she was getting about “AP” because she is tired of her 9 month old not sleeping through the night and how she just thinks that responding to the child’s needs is the cause of the sleep problems… especially since all of the moms that did CIO at 3 months of age are all sleeping great….

So, I had to respond…

“Here is my opinion on the whole subject… and why I think you should not be discouraged…

First…

There is a big population of kids that are forced to cry themselves to sleep night after night (and it IS emotional damaging and can lead to emotional problems later on in life)

Also Crying to sleep is SOLELY for the benefit of the parent… NOT the child… Crying to sleep is physically and emotionally draining (if you have ever done it then you know how draining it is)… (this is another reason that CIO may also “help” them sleep longer)

Also, CIO is not a one time solution because it has to be done over and over again… Say if a child is sick, or teething and and actually gets a response from their parent then they regain the hope that their parent will come to them when they need it and have to be trained all over again…

Another thing is that kids that CIO or are sleep-trained, DO wake up in the night they just know that if they cry no one cares enough to come, they give up… Also like a few of the pp said… some parents just exaggerate and don’t want to admit that they may attend to their child at night because they feel “guilty”….

And, as another pp said… AP parents are maybe more in tune with their parenting style and don’t have as much guilt that their child is not “sleeping through the night”….

So… I think it is NORMAL that a large majority of children are not sleeping through the night…if it wasn’t normal then there wouldn’t be so much money being made in trying to solve “sleep problems” and it wouldn’t be such a big issue…

As for when it comes to Attachment Parenting and “sleep issues”…

Personally… I think that more parents are losing sleep over the idea that their child is not sleeping through the night and also they try to impose what they think a child should be doing instead of letting the child lead… 

We all know that trying to get a child to sleep when WE are ready for them to go to sleep but THEY are not is a tiring and exasperating struggle… The moms that I know (AP or NOT) that don’t have “sleep issues” are the ones that try and if it doesn’t work then they just let the child have quiet play etc and then try again when they see another sleepy cue…

Also, there is nothing wrong with nursing to sleep… they will wean from it by themselves when they are ready to do so… Nursing to sleep is a great parenting tool and is not a bad habit… Nature has made us in a way that the hormones in warm milk (like breastmilk) help us fall asleep (even some adults have warm milk before going to sleep)…

Also, a point to make is that a FIVE hour stretch is considered “Sleeping through the night” and NOT the 10-12 hours that people boast about…

So if a child is sleeping 8pm to 1am or 12pm -5am then they are sleeping through the night in the technical sense…

Of course if we didn’t go to sleep at 7pm.. but went to sleep at 11pm then we have only had a 2 hour sleep if our child wakes at 1am then we will not be as well rested. However, he problem then is with OUR sleeping habits, not the child’s!

Of course we don’t want to go to be at 7pm so instead we can try other things such as “dream-nursing” before we go to bed. Co-sleep so that we don’t have to wake fully etc…

Anyway… my point is that it is normal for many kids to be waking at night…and the problem is more our high expectations (too high) of what they should be doing instead of giving them the benefit of the doubt that will do it when they are ready… also we should look at our individual child and follow their cues instead of looking towards a “sleep expert” or a book… especially since they have never read the book and don’t know that they “should” be doing those things 😉

as for me… I have one child that is nursed to sleep and has been sleeping 10-12 hour nights from the time he was 8 weeks old… and one child that fights sleep like crazy and doesn’t always want to be nursed to sleep and wakes up during the night….both have been parented in the same way.. it is that one was ready (and wouldn’t nap during the day even as a newborn) and the other just still needs me at night…I just don’t stress about it…”

The overall response of the board is to be awaited but it will determine if I am going to stay host or not (and I have been leaning towards resigning for a while now)…

Lately people have been getting the impression that AP is simply having your child be attached to you emotionally and that if you are not an AP parent then you are completely detached…. They also get completely stuck on only one of the 7 B’s (Balance) and seem to be able to dismiss all of the rest (birth bonding, breastfeeding, babywearing, beware of baby trainers, belief in the language value of baby’s cries) and justify dismissing the rest because it will maintain “balance”…

Personally I think the opposite of attachment Parenting is not “detached” but “separation”… They can still be emotionally attached (even a child who is beaten is still emotionally attached to their parents….. and I am Not saying that Mainstream is equal to beating)

But… What I see (and don’t like) about Mainstream parenting is the need and goal of having an independent child at a very young age… They are proud that they can leave their child with anyone… they are proud that they don’t have to hold their child often, they are proud that their child doesn’t care if they are with them or not… they are proud that their child no longer “needs” them…. they also expect that their children shouldn’t need them…

AP is not only about doing what is best for the child but it is about listening to the child and not imposing your expectations on them… Someone who is making their child Cry themselves to Sleep justifies it often by saying that it is what the child “needs” and that they are responding to their childs “need to sleep”…. and can therefore see it in the realm of AP…..But this is NOT AP… this is a mainstream way of thinking…. I don’t think that any mom LIKES to make their child Cry themselves to sleep but they believe that it is in the best interests of the child…. when it is really because of an unrealistic expectation brought on by society…. if they actually listened to what the child needs then there wouldn’t be the need for tears…