As Parents Do We Have the Freedom to Chose Differently from our Own Up-Bringing?

As a parent interested in growth it's important to acknowledge the fact that certain ideas we have, or certain parenting techniques we employ may not be optimal for our child's growth. These ideas may feel ok and right at the time, but this is because society accepts them as right and therefor makes it ok. And when others make it ok, we feel ok about it. This has been demonstrated throughout history, when the slave trade was accepted and when women were non-citizens. Those situations were ok because people made them ok, and many didn’t question if the ideas behind these approaches were correct.

If you think about the concept behind yelling or punishing a child when they don’t have enough information, It doesn’t make a lot of sense. Then why do people continue to do it one may ask? Good question. One that will be answered shortly...

Many people feel the pressure more publicly than in their private lives. For example disciplining our children in public is encouraged and there is pressure from those around us to keep our children “in line”. Many parents wouldn’t talk to their children the same way in public as they do at home. Sometimes we parent or even live our lives in certain ways because we feel pressured to do so.
And oftentimes we parent in ways which were taught to us, and we really don’t have choice in the matter.

The definition of choice in the dictionary:
1. The act of choosing; selection.
2. The power, right, or liberty to choose; option.

It is important to see that we never really have had the choice to parent in one way or another. We were never given the option of doing things a different way. We practice what learned without question. So please don’t think for a minute that you had a choice about parenting up to this point because you haven’t. You are doing what your parents have done with you, and at the same time rebelling against what they were doing. Doesn’t make much sense does it?

By acknowledging the possibility that we did not have a choice we are on the road to becoming a better parent. In order to change something, it needs to be put into light and perspective.
Please take a look right now at just the POSSIBILITY that what you are doing may not be the most effective way to parent. Science has actually proven that the ways in which we have raised our children in the last decade is not the healthiest and most effective way possible. Here are just a few points, I will add more scientific resources to add to this:
· It has been proven that children raised with authoritarian discipline have lower IQ scores and are unhealthier emotionally, especially later on in life. Authoritarian as in harsh tones, yelling, ruling with an iron fist.
· Children that were raised in homes with lots of love and affection do better than their peers later on in life.
· Adults that were raised in homes with one or more parents who used encouragement were more financially and emotionally successful as adults.

The bottom line is that in starting a journey to heal our child's hurts we need to look at our parenting practices more carefully....

Warmly,

Ashley

The Origins Of Attachment Parenting REVEALED! Part 2

Later in the 1970's a very courageous woman named Jean Liedloff, an American writer, published her now cult classic "The Continuum Concept". Jean spent two and a half years deep in the South American jungle with Stone Age Indians. On her journey Jean observed many interesting things happening in South America regarding parenting and child rearing that wasn't happening back home in the U.K. She observed that children of all ages took care of one another and played together contentedly. There were no tantrums, arguing and fighting. Whining or terrible two's seemed non-existent. The children seemed to listen to their parents and played for hours unsupervised.

"Far from being disciplined or suppressed into compliant behavior, these little angels are relaxed and cheerful. And they grow up to be happy, confident, cooperative adults!"

http://www.continuum-concept.org/reading/whosInControl.html

Out of her research Jean created the Continuum Concept.

According to Jean Liedloff, the Continuum Concept is the idea that in order to achieve optimal physical, mental and emotional development, human beings — especially babies — require the kind of experience to which our species adapted during the long process of our evolution. For an infant, these include such experiences as...

• constant physical contact with his mother (or another familiar caregiver as needed) from birth;
  
  
• sleeping in his parents' bed, in constant physical contact, until he leaves of his own volition (often about two years);
  
  
• breastfeeding "on cue" — nursing in response to his own body's signals;
  
  
• being constantly carried in arms or otherwise in contact with someone, usually his mother, and allowed to observe (or nurse, or sleep) while the person carrying him goes about his or her business — until the infant begins creeping, then crawling on his own impulse, usually at six to eight months;
  
  
• having caregivers immediately respond to his signals (squirming, crying, etc.), without judgment, displeasure, or invalidation of his needs, yet showing no undue concern nor making him the constant center of attention;
  
  
• sensing (and fulfilling) his elders' expectations that he is innately social and cooperative and has strong self-preservation instincts, and that he is welcome and worthy.
  

Jeans book The Continuum Concept became wildly popular and brought into the western hemisphere the concept of "child wearing", slings, baby carriers, co-sleeping, breast feeding on cue, etc.

At the time this book was hugely controversial and not well accepted in some circles as you can imagine. Though it changed to course of parenting...

Later on, in the 80's Dr.William Sears wrote the book Creative Parenting: How to Use the New Continuum Concept to Raise Children Successfully from Birth Through Adolescence. Now of course what I am about to say can't be proven but his works were obviously based on Jean Liedloffs work. While writing his books he coined the term Attachment Parenting yet the idea was developed long before his work. Here is the basic concept of Dr.Sears Attachment Parenting:

Dr. Sears Eight principles of Attachment Parenting

Per Dr. Sears' theory of attachment parenting (AP), proponents such as the API attempt to foster a secure bond with their children by promoting eight principles which are identified as goals for parents to strive for. These eight principles are:

1. Preparation for Pregnancy, Birth and Parenting
   
2. Feed with Love and Respect
   
3. Respond with Sensitivity
   
4. Use Nurturing Touch
   
5. Engage in Nighttime Parenting
   
6. Provide Consistent Loving Care
   
7. Practice Positive Discipline
   
8. Strive for Balance in Personal and Family Life
   

These values are interpreted in a variety of ways across the movement. Many attachment parents also choose to live a natural family living (NFL) lifestyle, such as natural childbirth, home birth, stay-at-home parenting, co-sleeping, breastfeeding, babywearing
homeschooling, unschooling, the anti-circumcision movement, the anti-vaccination movement, natural health, cooperative movements, and support of organic food.

However, Dr. Sears does not require a parent to strictly follow any set of rules, instead encouraging parents to be creative in responding to their child's needs. Attachment parenting, outside the guise of Dr. Sears, focuses on responses that support secure attachments.

For more details on this see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attachment_parenting.

To Summarize, the Attachment Theory was developed by John Bowlby working with Mary Ainsworth, and the studies of Harry Harlow's monkeys greatly contributed at the same time.

A short while later Jean went out into the research field and brought back many findings from South America. Bringing the Continuum Concept to the Western world which was later coined Attachment Parenting by William Sears.

From here many people have taken the basic info and used it to their liking, adjusting here and there. Now days the term Attachment Parenting does take on many different meanings. So when I hear it, I don't think of only Dr.Sears but the many people that initiated this life changing parenting style.

Tomorrow I will talk about my own take on AP.

Sincerely,

Ashley

The Origins of Attachment Parenting REVEALED! Part 1

Attachment Parenting is a very Broad term. For simplicity's sake, I will begin with the FACTS and bare bones as to how Attachment Parenting started.

The original concept of Attachment Parenting was formally introduced in 1958 by John Bowlby in a publication of two papers "the Nature of the Child's Tie to his Mother", in which the concepts of "attachment" were introduced. This was the Attachment Theory and not yet coined Attachment Parenting.

For details of Bowlbys Attachment Theory visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attachment_theory

More information on the works of John Bowlby himself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bowlby

John Bowlby devoted extensive research to the concept of attachment, describing it as a "lasting psychological connectedness between human beings". Bowlby discussed that early experiences in childhood have an important influence on development and behavior later in life. Early attachment styles are established in childhood through the infant/caregiver relationship.

Bowlby believed that there are four distinguishing characteristics of attachment:

1. Proximity Maintenance - The desire to be near the people we are attached to.
   
2. Safe Haven - Returning to the attachment figure for comfort and safety in the face of a fear or threat.
   
3. Secure Base - The attachment figure acts as a base of security from which the child can explore the surrounding environment.
   
4. Separation Distress - Anxiety that occurs in the absence of the attachment figure.
   

Alongside Bowlby was Mary Ainsworth who did her own Attachment Theory work and greatly contributed to Bowlby's work. You can read more about their fascinating studies and lives: http://www.psychology.sunysb.edu/attachment/online/inge_origins.pdf (I found this Bio very interesting).

Around the same time Harry Harlow did research and scientific study on infant rhesus monkeys
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Harlow). Below is an excerpt from: http://www.uoregon.edu/~adoption/studies/HarlowMLE.htm that explains his work far better than I can:

The Science of Love

How did Harlow go about constructing his science of love? He separated infant monkeys from their mothers a few hours after birth, then arranged for the young animals to be "raised" by two kinds of surrogate monkey mother machines, both equipped to dispense milk. One mother was made out of bare wire mesh. The other was a wire mother covered with soft terry cloth. Harlow's first observation was that monkeys who had a choice of mothers spent far more time clinging to the terry cloth surrogates, even when their physical nourishment came from bottles mounted on the bare wire mothers. This suggested that infant love was no simple response to the satisfaction of physiological needs. Attachment was not primarily about hunger or thirst. It could not be reduced to nursing.

Then Harlow modified his experiment and made a second important observation. When he separated the infants into two groups and gave them no choice between the two types of mothers, all the monkeys drank equal amounts and grew physically at the same rate. But the similarities ended there. Monkeys who had soft, tactile contact with their terry cloth mothers behaved quite differently than monkeys whose mothers were made out of cold, hard wire. Harlow hypothesized that members of the first group benefited from a psychological resource—emotional attachment—unavailable to members of the second. By providing reassurance and security to infants, cuddling kept normal development on track.

What exactly did Harlow see that convinced him emotional attachment made a decisive developmental difference? When the experimental subjects were frightened by strange, loud objects, such as teddy bears beating drums, monkeys raised by terry cloth surrogates made bodily contact with their mothers, rubbed against them, and eventually calmed down. Harlow theorized that they used their mothers as a "psychological base of operations," allowing them to remain playful and inquisitive after the initial fright had subsided. In contrast, monkeys raised by wire mesh surrogates did not retreat to their mothers when scared. Instead, they threw themselves on the floor, clutched themselves, rocked back and forth, and screamed in terror. These activities closely resembled the behaviors of autistic and deprived children frequently observed in institutions as well as the pathological behavior of adults confined to mental institutions, Harlow noted. The awesome power of attachment and loss over mental health and illness could hardly have been performed more dramatically.

Though Harry didn't coin any terms, he contributed significantly to the Attachment Theorem.

This is Part One of The Origins of Attachment Parenting REVEALED!

Stay tuned for Part Two tomorrow and discover who really started Attachment Parenting...

Dear Parent...

Dear Parent,

Congratulations! Seeking out this information says A LOT about who you are as a person and who you are as a parent. I know that you want something different and something better for yourself and your family. Know that you have taken a step in the right direction to becoming a better parent.

In Practicing Attachment Style Parenting:

• You and your child will become significantly closer

• Your child will trust you and want to share things with you

• Your child's emotional and intellectual intelligence will increase

• You will feel less pressure and more confident in your parenting skills

• You will feel less pressure to be and “do” more

• Many behavioral patterns such as bed wetting and waking up at night will fall away

• Your child will be more resilient to face later peer pressures and negative influences

In implementing Attachment Parenting Principles I can’t even begin to describe the changes you will notice in your child and in yourself. And I am so happy to be able to share this with you. This information has been a blessing in my life and I know it will be the same for you!

What is Attachment Parenting?

How long ago did Attachment Parenting start?

Who invented it?

If you would like to find out the answers to these questions and more stay tuned...

Sincerely,

Ashley