Attachment Parenting Series

Attachment Parenting (AP) is a term coined by Dr. Sears to describe a style of parenting that promotes a strong parent/child bond. Although AP is a flexible and family-specific approach, Dr. Sears describes seven tools (listed below) as a starting point for parents. AP is the style of parenting we have chosen for our family and have used since the birth of our oldest child.

In some ways, I believe the term "attachment parenting" can be a bit of a misnomer. The natural parent/child bond is strong and takes a significant amount of trauma to break. It was a term, however, which rose in response to an increasingly common form of parenting which encouraged independence in very young infants. As the ideas of "independence" and "scheduled training" became of such importance to even babies, parent/child attachment was affected, the extent to which I believe we have yet to see. AP places a strong emphasis on developing and maintaining that parent/child bond in a very natural and intuitive manner.

For the next two months, I will be posting a weekly series about attachment parenting - what is it, what is it not, how it plays out specifically in our home, what struggles we have had, and what we can do at the community level to make this instinctive style of parenting, well, instinctive again.

As an outline, I will follow Dr. Sear's "Seven Baby B's":

1. Birth bonding
2. Breastfeeding
3. Babywearing
4. Bedding close to baby
5. Belief in the language value of your baby's cry
6. Beware of baby trainers
7. Balance

At the end of each post, I'll include a Mister Linky where you can submit your own blog post on the topic. Let's call it a carnival! Share your thoughts, your information, your struggles, your best resources, whatever you like. I look forward to reading your posts and highlighting a few of them in a closing summary.

We'll start next Monday with the first of the Baby B's - Birth Bonding!