Attachment Parenting – Learning From The Other Side

15th November 2014

 

By Astra Niedra

 

Guest Writer for Wake Up World

 

There’s a bit of push-and-pull going on these days between parents who adhere to ‘attachment’ parenting principles and parents who are more authoritarian in approach.

 

Attachment parenting is based on the principle of understanding a child’s emotional and physical needs and responding intuitively to these needs. The focus of attachment parenting is on building a strong relationship between parents and child but the phrase has come to represent parents who co-sleep, wear their babies in slings, and exclusively breastfeed. On the other side, authoritarian parentsbelieve that children need to be trained to fit in with the parent’s lives and so ought to learn to fit family routines, to sleep independently, and so on.

 

I’ve naturally followed attachment parenting principles myself without initially (over thirteen years ago now) knowing about it as a movement or parenting ‘philosophy’. It just seemed instinctive to me to attempt to meet my babies’ needs, not the other way around, and I had an intense desire to become attached and to bond very deeply with my babies.

 

But humans are complex and varied and there are many ways to parent…

 

I personally believe that many of the ‘old rules’ of parenting need to be modified, because we now know that secure attachment, breast milk, physical touch and emotional connection are best for the development and wellbeing of our children. I think most parents realise this, but we also know that it is not always possible to provide these things, and we all do the best we can in each moment.

 

I believe that most parents would use a combination of techniques and strategies, depending on what works with each child, even depending on what works in each moment. Undoubtedly, most people have their children’s best interests at heart and will adopt the strategy they believe fits best with their own internal rule system, values and circumstances.

 

Then there are those people who have been raised in a non-attachment way, and who continue this tradition with their own children.

 

So, in the spirit of attempting to understand the complexity of this part of our human nature, I have tried to discover why so many people parent in a non-attachment way by searching within myself, for a part of my inner self that would raise their children in such a way.

 

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