Parenting Methods: Attachment Parenting

Parents are very protective of their parenting methods/styles – with good reason. It is hard to feel like you’re doing the best thing for your child when other people might have different ideas and advice. As my husband says: everyone is an expert on their own child. And that makes for a lot of people in the world who feel like they are expert parents. It is easy to feel defensive of your parental practices when other people have differing ideas. For this reason, I’ve tried to make this post as sensitive as possible while remaining honest to my own experiences.

Before Ze was born I read lots and lots about parenting. The Attachment Parenting style really resonated with me. Attachment Parenting basically advocates helping the child feel emotionally secure in the world by respecting his needs and meeting those needs. Dr. Sears is the main representative of this style and he recommends responding as soon as possible to baby cries, babywearing, co-sleeping, and trusting your instincts as a parent. Attachment parenting is less about training your baby to fit into your family/lifestyle and learning to communicate with your baby and respond to what he needs.

There are lots of great things about AP that have worked for us. For one, I love babywearing. Ze practically lived in the moby wrap (mama) and Beco (papi) for the first two months. He still is carried around at least 2 hours of the day, usually more because he is in the moby all the time I am out running errands. He seems to feel comforted by the closeness of the wrap. Initially I worried that wearing him all the time would prevent him from learning to feel secure separate from us, but as he’s gotten a little older he enjoys his bouncy seat and has started taking naps in his own bed. He also can focus on toys (or more likely, the curtains or the ceiling fan) for a longer period of time.

Co-sleeping worked for us the first two weeks. It was helpful to have Ze close to me while I was healing from the birth. Also, I could check on his breathing at night and feel reassured that he was okay. Our son, however, is a SUPER LOUD sleeper and really I was not getting any sleep with him right next to me. I always felt like I needed to check on his breathing and every noise he made would wake me up. I think co-sleeping is great for the families that enjoy it and as long as everyone is getting sleep.

AP is very wary of baby trainers: for example those who encourage crying-it-out to get the baby to sleep. I think AP would say that when your baby cries in the night, he has a need – whether that be that he is hungry or wet or simply needs to feel close to you at the moment. Letting him cry doesn’t respect his needs. This is where I understand AP but also disagree a bit. I feel okay with letting Ze cry a bit: during the day when I am changing a load of laundry or using the bathroom for example, or at night for a couple minutes if he wakes up 5 minutes after I put him down and is fed and changed. One day, I tried letting him “cry-it-out” or cry himself to sleep. I was miserable and he was miserable. It didn’t work for us. However, I also want to help him do things himself. I want him to form healthy emotional attachments but also to become independent. The Montessori approach, which has also influenced my thinking, has a lot to say about this and I’ll write more about it later. Well, the baby is crying so I will have to finish all these thoughts later.

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