Last year, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Peter Haiman.  Aside from being and authentic and good hearted individual, he is also a wealth of parenting knowledge.  You can visit his website at PeterHaiman.com for more info.

I will be posting the audio interview here soon.

Read more »

I was at the park today with my son where I met a full time single dad at home with his 4 year old daughter.
Last week I met a babysitter that takes her 5 year old neighbor to the park because her mom can’t take care of her.

It’s stories like these that allow me to appreciate how good and wonderful my life is, and how lucky I am.  My son gets round the clock care, lots of full attention and love every day. He gets hours of play time and joy.

I always reflect on this and wonder what my life would be like, and who I would be now if that were the case for me.  My son will grow up in a totally different world from what I grew up in.  And I thank god and the universe every day for the blessing of the wonderful, powerful and amazing parenting tools that are available to me.
The road to providing a different life, and being different than my parents is not an easy one.  Every moment, every day, I’m faced with choices.  Do I scream at my son when I lose patience?  or do I deal with my own stuff and allow him to live a happy and free life like he deserves?  Though the latter is more difficult and its much easier to spew my emotions onto him than deal with them.  I take every day “one choice at a time”.  Acknowledging the good and taking responsibility for the mistakes by making things right.

Ashley

Lately I’ve been having discussions on homeschooling and trying to protect little ones from exposure to negativity from the regular school system. Many parents feel that by protecting children with homeschooling or sending them to school later children aren’t prepared for the “real world” and end up in a “bubble”. 

The idea that children need to be socialized at 2, 3, 4 and even 5 is absolute hogwash and baloney. 

It’s CRITICAL to protect and nurture our young ones as much as possible. The world is a harsh enough place as is and introducing them to obnoxious or harmful behavior early is no way to foster esteem.   Children learn by example and by putting them in daycare and school at a young age is not an answer to socialization. 

Many children have very difficult and abusive home lives, and with the large ratio of kids to teachers there’s no way for care givers and teachers to regulate what’s going on. And other children’s issues and projections are often going to be transferred onto our children. That’s just the way it is. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with parents doing their very best to prevent this from happening. 

For parents that NEED to send their children to daycare or school early, that’s OK, and there’s no need to feel guilty.   Though, if you do have the option of keeping your child at home OR ARE sending them to school to give them a dose of the “real world” please think again. It may do them more harm than good. Your child will get a large dose of reality soon enough, introducing it too soon is not an enhancer of any sorts. 

Research reveals children don’t need to be socialized at 2, 3 and 4. If you observe a daycare for the day you will see that it’s often riddled with conflicts. Young children don’t have self control and there’s often more conflict over toys than actually playing. 

Instead of focusing on “doses of reality” we need to focus on a better world, and that may include controlling our child’s environment. Just like not allowing teenagers to go to nightclubs before they’re ready. It’s the same with young ones. 

Something that comes up for me time and time again is patience.  I am often just itching to get in there when my son is playing and tell him what to do and give my two cents.  But I usually manage to hold back. 

The other day we were playing “pirates” which is one of his favorites.   And I wanted to do this and that and I felt myself getting frustrated.  So I just took a moment and stopped what I was doing and reflected back inside myself.  I asked myself “what is going on here”.  And I saw that it was all ridiculous.  I was trying to control the situation and control his play and I just let go.  We had much more fun after that. 

The moral of the story is when you find yourself getting frustrated and impatient just cool it because it usually isn’t a big deal.  And the consequences are often way greater when we give in to our anger and impatience.  If I would have given in and gotten upset,  I wouldn’t have hurt only myself but hurt Aven as well.  And that small moment of “immediate” gratification just isn’t worth it. 

All good wishes,

Ashley

This is an excerpt from an Attachment Parenting interview I did with parenting expert Naomi Aldort.  You can download the interview transcript for free by clicking here Attachment Parenting Interview With Naomi . You can also download the audio interview here Audio Interview With Naomi.  If you would like information on Naomi’s book you can visit here:  Raising Our Children, Raising Ourselves,  You can also visit Naomi’s website at  www.naomialdort.com.

Ashley: Is it necessary to use discipline with children?

Naomi:
No. In our culture, The word “discipline” is used as a nice word for punishment or even spanking. When a child is totally content with who they are, when they know that you are on their side and they trust themselves and you, they don’t need to be disciplined.

Hurting someone doesn’t make them behave better, it makes them aggressive and it makes them hurt. It makes them lose every quality that we already talked about about creating an emotionally healthy child. Not only is it unnecessary, it’s actually harmful.

I raised three children and I know hundreds of thousands of children through my work, and deal directly with clients who call and have sessions by phone and in person, as well in my many workshops where I meet hundreds of people at once. Again and again, I see those children who are raised attached, connected, bonded and with a sense of trust and self-respect and they behave well because they want to, not because they are afraid of the parent and not because they are trying to appease the parent.

If you look on Amazon in the description of my book, the first sentence is exactly about that; it talks about all parents would love it if they could never scold or never punish. Nobody wants to hurt their child; parents love their children and never want to hurt them. They only do that because they innocently and mistakenly believe that otherwise the child will not learn to behave well. What my book and my work is about is how to raise children who behave well because they want to, of their own free will. Isn’t it so much nicer to have a child that wants to do well? They’re not afraid of you and that’s why they’re doing well, which means the moment you’re not at home, they’ll do the opposite. They’re not wanting to appease you.

When we appease another person, we’re taking our cues for behavior from the other person. Whether fear of punishment or seeking their approval or praise, it’s all the same; it’s looking “out there” to “what should I do?” But if the mother or the father is disciplining, which means “now mommy and daddy are the police”, then the underlying message is, “as I grow up, I need to learn to get by in spite of the police and against them”. That’s where you get all those teenagers whose parents don’t even know what’s going on in their lives; they are hiding, they are lying, and are living in secrecy and what their life is about is succumbing to peer pressure.

So if we want somebody who is at peace with themselves, they will do what’s right from inside, because they want to and because they know

“if my mother stops me from doing something, she’s stopping me because she loves me and because she knows what’s best for me”.

It’s not that the child will never scream; if I pull the two-year-old out of the street, the initial reaction may be screaming for a few reasons: One, I’ve thwarted what he’s doing. He ran after the ball or after the cat-and maybe not aware of cars coming around or just the danger. Maybe there were no cars at that moment and he thought it was fine, but I want to be clear “We don’t run into the street”. So I grab the kid and he may scream. He may also scream because he senses my anxiety when I come in, and I have a tremendous amount of adrenaline and fear going on and I may scream while I do that, because I have no control over that. He may scream, he may be upset, and the ball may be gone and the cat may be gone and he didn’t get what he wants. I’m not saying that you would always do only things that they baby or toddler is always happy about, but when the connection is so primal and strong and positive,
“My mother is on my side, she doesn’t go to punish me or teach me a lesson or scold me, she’s finding solutions for me and when that happens, I can finish crying and understand what mom went through, if she says she is really scared."
‘I was afraid that you would run into the street and I love you so much, I don’t want you to be hurt’”-then the child gets over it and becomes powerful. “I can cry, I can be upset and then I get to the other side of it and my mom loves me all through it”. Again, that’s not discipline, that’s responding.

Stay tuned for part two of the series: Is It Necessary To Use Discipline With Children? Naomi Aldort

For the interview live please visit: Parenting Interview With Naomi Aldort 1, Parenting Interview With Naomi Aldort 2.

I have read so much information on this topic. And I think it comes down to more than one factor, which I will discuss shortly….

What is success and how do we determine it anyway?

From a societal and social conditioning perspective success would be financial, emotional and a host of other meanings. According to wikipedia….

Success may mean: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Success

• a level of social status

• achievement of an objective/goal

• the opposite of failure

Research shows that most financially successful people have ONE thing and ONE thing only in common. And that’s each of them had one person in their lives that encouraged them beyond all else and believed in them NO MATTER WHAT! I find that often (and you can disagree) people that are successful financially generally are successful in other areas as well. This is not in all cases but most of the big players in the financial world know what it takes to be successful. They undersatnd that In order to be successful one must master other areas of life, such as emotions etc.

Back to “How to groom your child for success” … Just like the study points out. It is imperative to be supportive and believe in our children NO MATTER WHAT!

Its no matter what the circumstance. I think this one factor alone is imperative. And can make or break their “success” factor.

This is an excerpt from an Attachment Parenting interview I did with parenting expert Naomi Aldort.  You can download the interview transcript for free by clicking here Attachment Parenting Interview With Naomi . You can also download the audio interview here Audio Interview With Naomi.  If you would like information on Naomi’s book you can visit here:  Raising Our Children, Raising Ourselves,  You can also visit Naomi’s website at  www.naomialdort.com.

Ashley: What is the basic foundation for raising an emotionally healthy child?

Naomi:

That’s such a beautiful question, especially after the first one because it’s all connected. In a way I already answered it, but let’s go a little deeper as the child grows up…

The basic foundation for an emotionally healthy child is for the child to experience that they’re worthy and alright the way they are. 

If I give a message to the baby or the toddler, “What you want is not alright” and I’m not talking about wants like candy and toys; I’m talking about basic primal needs. If I want to be held, if I want to nurse, to breastfeed, if I want to sleep next to the person I love the most etc. What creates an emotional healthy child is, that the child knows that life is content and peaceful and things go my way (my needs are met). The other side of an emotionally healthy child is not the opposite, but people may see it as the opposite, is the ability of the child to face life however it is and love it however it is. That’s a little harder for most of us to teach because we were raised in a very materialistic society that’s addicted to getting what we want.

In life we don’t always get what we want, and children become emotionally powerful when they have that balance where the primal needs are there, so there is no anxiety about “Am I loved, am I worthy, will I get someone to snuggle next to me, will I be held?”. 

Having a benign attitude about that, like, “okay I wanted that toy and I guess I can’t have it, but I get to listen to a story with my mother now”, or “I just don’t get this, we’re not going to the beach right now”, or “we’re not eating ice cream right now”, and having that stay peaceful and rooted in who I am and me and the love of my mother and my father is the primary connection and all the rest is superficial, then I stay powerful and the baby can handle anything and they grow up being able to handle anything.

My teenager is 15 years old and the most sensitive age for peer pressure, comes home and he said, “You know, this friend of mine and these other two girls were all teasing me. They ganged up on me. And I said, “What did you say to them? Did it hurt your feelings?” He said “Absolutely not, that’s just their game, it has nothing to do with me.” He said, “I told them ‘that’s fine, I don’t mind.’” My children in general are not given to peer pressure and are not hurt by the usual stuff that teenagers are hurt by. In fact, each one of them- two of them are teenagers and one of them is an adult- A they become teenagers and as the peer pressure comes, they hear stories from their friends about “oh I feel so upset because so-and-so said this”, my children counsel them by saying “what’s there to be upset about?”. 

That kind of emotional resilience is not the result of getting whatever you want all your life, it’s the result of having the basic primal needs totally met, totally not questioned, even if sometimes you have to be separated from your mom for a little while, there is that essential.  Beingness knowing, “I’m always cared for and my feelings are always cared for and my feelings are always validated”.

The third thing is self-expression. Knowing that whatever I feel and what’s going on for me I can express fully and it doesn’t mean I change the universe. That’s where power comes from, I don’t change reality; the candy doesn’t materialize because I screamed, but I can express myself and somebody who loves me is going to listen to me, understand me and let me unleash the whole thing and move on.

For the interview live please visit: Parenting Interview With Naomi Aldort 1, Parenting Interview With Naomi Aldort 2.

In subscribing to this blog you will learn…

    * The Truth About Crying (And what to do when your child cries)
    * The Critical Mistake Most Parents Make When Trying to Stop Unruly Behavior
    * The Most Powerful Secret you Need to Know to Raise a Healthy Child (Learn this and you will never need to use punishment        again)
    * One Highly Destructive Approach to Discipline that Almost Every Parent uses (And how you can avoid it)
    * Learn why Siblings Fight and What you Can do About it
    * Why Most Parenting Programs Don’t Work (And by using them you could be doing your child more harm than good)
    * How to Remain Calm when Your Child is Pushing Your Buttons (If you don’t it could be detrimental to your child) - How to get        Your Child to Clean up Without Asking (Yes, even your toddler)
    * What Every Parent Must Know About Time Outs (After hearing this you will never consider a time out again)
    * Learn to Stop Aggression and Anger at the Roots, so it’s Gone Permanently
    * The 3 Elements that Must be Included When Playing with your Child (Most parents do not know this)
    * How to Reduce No’s by 80% and Have a More Cooperative Child

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.

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…

Warmly,

Ashley

Click here for the origins of Attachment Parenting Part 2