Attachment Parenting Info

"Attachment Parenting Info"

Attachment Parenting International's Eight Principles of Parenting:

• 1) Prepare for Pregnancy, Birth, and Parenting: Become emotionally and physically prepared for pregnancy and birth. Research available options for healthcare providers and birthing environments, and become informed about routine newborn care. Continuously educate yourself about developmental stages of childhood, setting realistic expectations and remaining flexible.

• 2) Feed with Love and Respect: Breastfeeding is the optimal way to satisfy an infant's nutritional and emotional needs. "Bottle Nursing" adapts breastfeeding behaviors to bottle-feeding to help initiate a secure attachment. Follow the feeding cues for both infants and children, encouraging them to eat when they are hungry and stop when they are full. Offer healthy food choices and model healthy eating behavior.

• 3) Respond with Sensitivity: Build the foundation of trust and empathy beginning in infancy. Tune in to what your child is communicating to you, then respond consistently and appropriately. Babies cannot be expected to self-soothe, they need calm, loving, empathetic parents to help them learn to regulate their emotions. Respond sensitively to a child who is hurting or expressing strong emotion, and share in their joy.

• 4) Use Nurturing Touch: Touch meets a baby's needs for physical contact, affection, security, stimulation, and movement. Skin-to-skin contact is especially effective, such as during breastfeeding, bathing, or massage. Carrying or Babywearing also meets this need while on the go. Hugs, snuggling, back rubs, massage, and physical play help meet this need in older children.

• 5) Ensure Safe Sleep, Physically and Emotionally: Babies and children have needs at night just as they do during the day; from hunger, loneliness, and fear, to feeling too hot or too cold. They rely on parents to soothe them and help them regulate their intense emotions. Sleep training techniques can have detrimental physiological and psychological effects. Safe co-sleeping has benefits to both babies and parents.

• 6) Provide Consistent and Loving Care: Babies and young children have an intense need for the physical presence of a consistent, loving, responsive caregiver: ideally a parent. If it becomes necessary, choose an alternate caregiver who has formed a bond with the child and who cares for him in a way that strengthens the attachment relationship. Keep schedules flexible, and minimize stress and fear during short separations

• 7) Practice Positive Discipline: Positive discipline helps a child develop a conscience guided by his own internal discipline and compassion for others. Discipline that is empathetic, loving, and respectful strengthens the connection between parent and child. Rather than reacting to behavior, discover the needs leading to the behavior. Communicate and craft solutions together while keeping everyone's dignity intact.

• 8) Strive for Balance in Your Personal and Family Life: It is easier to be emotionally responsive when you feel in balance. Create a support network, set realistic goals, put people before things, and don't be afraid to say "no". Recognize individual needs within the family and meet them to the greatest extent possible without compromising your physical and emotional health. Be creative, have fun with parenting, and take time to care for yourself.

- More Info: http://www.attachmentparenting.org/principles/api 


Dr. William Sears' 7 Attachment Parenting Tools:

The Baby B’s Dr. William Sears first wrote on Attachment Parenting as an approach to parenting, but not a strict set of rules to follow. He lists out the "Seven Baby B's" of Attachment Parenting as tools to use in your responsive parenting.

• 1) Birth bonding: The way baby and parents get started with one another helps the early attachment unfold. The days and weeks after birth are a sensitive period in which mothers and babies are uniquely primed to want to be close to one another. A close attachment after birth and beyond allows the natural, biological attachment-promoting behaviors of the infant and the intuitive, biological, care-giving qualities of the mother to come together. Both members of this biological pair get off to the right start at a time when the infant is most needy and the mother is most ready to nurture. “What if something happens to prevent our immediate bonding?” Sometimes medical complications keep you and your baby apart for a while, but then catch-up bonding is what happens, attachment-parenting-babies starting as soon as possible. When the concept of bonding was first delivered onto the parenting scene twenty years ago, some people got it out of balance. The concept of human bonding being an absolute “critical period” or a “now-or-never” relationship was never intended. Birth bonding is not like instant glue that cements the mother-child relationship together forever. Bonding is a series of steps in your lifelong growing together with your child. Immediate bonding simply gives the relationship between parents and attachment parenting babies a headstart.

• 2) Breastfeeding: Breastfeeding is an exercise in baby reading. Breastfeeding helps you read your baby’s cues, her body language, which is the first step in getting to know your baby. Breastfeeding gives baby and mother a smart start in life. Breastmilk contains unique brain-building nutrients that cannot be manufactured or bought. Breastfeeding promotes the right chemistry between mother and baby by stimulating your body to produce prolactin and oxytocin, hormones that give your mothering a boost.

• 3) Babywearing: A baby learns a lot in the arms of a busy caregiver. Carried babies fuss less and spend more time in the state of quiet alertness, the behavior state in which babies learn most about their environment. Babywearing improves the sensitivity of the parents because your baby is so close to you, you get to know baby better. Closeness promotes familiarity with Attachment Parenting babies.

• 4) Bedding Close to Baby: Wherever all family members get the best night’s sleep is the right arrangement for your individual family. Co-sleeping adds a nighttime touch that helps busy daytime parents reconnect with their infant at night. Since nighttime is a scary time for little people, sleeping within close touching and nursing distance minimizes nighttime separation anxiety and helps Attachment Parenting babies learn that sleep is a pleasant state to enter and a fearless state to remain in.

• 5) Belief in the Language Value of Your Baby’s Cry: A baby’s cry is a signal designed for the survival of the baby and the development of the parents. Responding sensitively to your baby’s cries builds trust. Babies trust that their caregivers will be responsive to their needs. Parents gradually learn to trust in their ability to appropriately meet their baby’s needs. This raises the parent-child communication level up a notch. Tiny Attachment Parenting babies cry to communicate, not to manipulate.

• 6) Beware of Baby Trainers: Attachment Parenting teaches you how to be discerning of advice, especially those rigid and extreme parenting styles that teach you to watch a clock or a schedule instead of your baby; you know, the cry-it-out crowd. This “convenience” parenting is a short-term gain, but a long-term loss, and is not a wise investment. These more restrained styles of parenting create a distance between you and your baby and keep you from becoming an expert in your child.

• 7) Balance: In your zeal to give so much to your baby, it’s easy to neglect the needs of yourself and your marriage. As you will learn the key to putting balance in your parenting is being appropriately responsive to your baby – knowing when to say “yes” and when to say “no,” and having the wisdom to say “yes” to yourself when you need help.

- More Info: http://www.askdrsears.com/topics/parenting/attachment-parenting/attachment-parenting-babies 


Websites:
http://www.naturalchild.org/articles/attachment_parenting.html
http://www.askdrsears.com/topics/parenting
http://www.attachmentparenting.org/
http://www.mothering.com/ 
http://www.naturalchild.org/
http://www.ahaparenting.com/
http://thegreenparent.co.uk/


Books:
"Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering: A Doctor's Guide to Natural Childbirth and Early Parenting Choices" - Sarah J. Buckley
"The Natural Child: Parenting from the Heart" - Jan Hunt
"Baby Bliss: Your One-stop Guide for the First Three Months and Beyond" - Harvey Karp
"The Happiest Baby on the Block: The New Way to Calm Crying and Help Your Newborn Sleep Longer" - Harvey Karp
"Raising Your Spirited Child: A Guide for Parents Whose Child Is More Intense, Sensitive, Perceptive, Persistent, Energetic" - Mary Sheedy Kurcinka
"Attached at the Heart: Eight Proven Parenting Principles for Raising Connected and Compassionate Children" - Barbara Nicholson
"The No-Cry Sleep Solution: Gentle Ways to Help Your Baby Sleep Through the Night" - Elizabeth Pantley
"The Attachment Parenting Book: A Commonsense Guide to Understanding and Nurturing Your Baby" - William Sears, MD
"The Baby Book: Everything You Need to Know About Your Baby from Birth to Age Two" - William Sears, MD
"The Fussy Baby Book: Parenting Your High-Need Child From Birth to Age Five" - William Sears, MD
"The Science of Parenting" - Margot Sunderland
"What Every Parent Needs To Know: The Incredible Effects Of Love, Nurture And Play On Your Child's Development" - Margot Sunderland
"Sweet Sleep: Nighttime and Naptime Strategies for the Breastfeeding Family" - Diane Wiessinger



***Check out our Gentle Parenting Resource File too: https://www.facebook.com/notes/hippie-mamas-of-missouri/gentle-parenting-info/1482152225424365