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Attachment parenting, Children, Dr. Sears, Dr. William Sears, Family, Gentle Parenting, Huffington Post, Infant, Motherhood, Nicola Kraus, Parent, Parenting, Sleeping through the night, Weaning
It’s that time again: another article meant to provoke a big response by attacking attachment parenting. Nicola Kraus recently wrote an article for the Huffington Post entitled, My Message to Dr. Sears: Why I Chose Detachment Parenting.
Nicola writes about Blossom “nursing her 25-year-old” in public (he’s actually only three), about her various friends who’ve gotten divorced as a direct result of co-sleeping with their kids (surely there were no other issues, right?), “parents who sometimes spontaneously burst into tears they are so sleep-deprived and miserable”, and a friend who, the implication is, has an unnatural affection for her son (do you think they’re still friends?).
I know I’m giving Nicola what she wants by writing this blog post (a link back to her article, more readers and more attention) but I just can’t help myself. I have a few things to say.
Nicola, you write that you “have yet to meet a parent of a child over 9 months old who isn’t in some kind of agony trying to undo the attachment crap.” So my question is: When can we meet? I’d like to prove you wrong.
My daughter, Adeline, will turn two in just under two months. She is a wonderful little girl, as anyone who has met her would agree. She’s outgoing, kind, funny, independent, and she even “behaves well,” which I’m guessing you think is the most important quality for a child to have.
We co-slept with Adeline until she was about three months old, when we slowly and gently transitioned her to sleeping in a crib. We never let her cry it out, but we did help her learn how to put herself to sleep. She started putting herself to sleep at about nine months, which is also when she started sleeping through the night. That may seem late to you, but it’s actually perfectly normal neurologically. Babies younger than that often need to eat throughout the night because they have small stomachs, not to mention that their brain literally is not wired to sleep long periods. Babies who “sleep through the night” at a younger age are usually still waking up, they’ve just learned not to ask for any help getting back to sleep.
Of course, some babies sleep better than others. This is usually for reasons individual to the babies, like how much and how often they need to eat, how settled their sleep patterns are, and how awake and alert they are during non-sleep times. It sounds like you had an easy baby. Good for you. Lots of parents don’t. Maybe you should stop judging their parenting styles and instead ask them if there’s anything you can do to help.
Infant sleep, thank god, only lasts a little while. Adeline now sleeps in her own bed (not a crib). Our bedtime routine is simple and when we’re done, I walk out of the room and she puts herself to sleep with no problems. If she’s having a bad night or is a little sick, I might cuddle with her and sing her to sleep. This does not make me miserable. In fact, I love it. It’s one of my favorite parts about being a mother; the kind of thing I looked forward to in my daydreams.
Very rarely, she will wake up with what I’m guessing is a bad dream or some kind of pain in the middle of the night, and we will bring her into bed with us for the rest of the night. My husband loves this time with her. It doesn’t ruin our sex life, nor does it make us more likely to get divorced. In fact, the last two years have made our marriage much stronger, even those hard times in the beginning when she didn’t sleep well. We learned that we could count on each other and that our marriage was deeper and more meaningful than travel and fancy dinners. We fell more in love with every night waking.
Of course, we love the chance to go out on a date and we do believe it’s essential to a healthy marriage. We’ve been lucky because Adeline has never experienced any severe separation anxiety and she’s great with babysitters. It’s obvious as her mother that this is because she’s so secure in my love. She’s so well, if you will, attached. Attachment Parenting has not left us with “crap” we need to undo, but rather with a well-adjusted, secure little girl.
You also criticize extended nursing, as though any mother who nurses longer than, what, six months?, is just a love-deprived freak taking it out on her child. I nursed Adeline until she was almost 20 months old, at which point she self-weaned (with a little nudge from me). I even, god forbid!, nursed her in public sometimes. I did not nurse her so long because I “need[ed] to be needed that badly because [my] own inner 3-year-old still isn’t sure if it was.” I nursed her that long because I knew that it was the best thing for her, and because I respected her need to wean slowly and gently.
In fact, when it really comes down to it, Attachment Parenting is about respect. Respect for yourself, yes, but also for your child. Something you don’t show much of in your piece. A child is not an accessory to be shown off at birthday parties (“Look how well she behaves! And she’s been sleeping through the night since six weeks!”) nor is a child an inconvenience that you need to manage (“We can just leave her with a babysitter and enjoy a night on the town any time we want! Thank god we don’t have to worry about parenting too often!”). A child is a human being, fully deserving of the same level of the respect that adults deserve.
That respect means that, when your child is an infant, you should respect her need to be cared for in all ways. She is helpless and she needs you, her mother or father, to be there for her. That is what Attachment Parenting is all about. (In case you didn’t know, Attachment Parenting as a technical term mainly applies to infants.) Respect, of course, also means that you should respect her growing independence as she gets older. If your child is ready to wean, by all means wean her. If she’s ready to sleep in her own bed, let her. Attachment Parenting does not proscribe a set of rules that all parents must follow, including nursing and co-sleeping into the preschool years. It never ceases to amaze me the way that uneducated parents conflate infants, toddlers and preschoolers as though they are exactly the same and should be treated the same.
I want to close with a comment on this line: “I didn’t need to hold her until she fell asleep because I was already prepping for the kayak trip on the Hudson I knew we’d one day take.” As a firm believer in the power of mindfulness, I feel sorry for you and your daughter. Why live in the future when you could be living in the moment with your infant, holding her and studying her tiny fingernails and soft breath? When you do eventually take that kayak trip, will you be so busy planning the vacation you’re going to take when she leaves for college that you won’t bother to enjoy the present moment? Will you spend her childhood looking forward to her adulthood, only to realize that her childhood was a beautiful and amazing place in its own right and that it passed you by while you were too busy to look?
I write as an attachment parenting mother. Did we have struggles? Yes, yes we did. As you so aptly put it, “Parenting is really fucking hard.” Parenting is hard for everyone, regardless of parenting style. I wish more people would stop trying to pin it all on one parenting guru or the other. Attachment Parenting is a choice that many parents make, and that, I believe, many more parents would make if they were fully educated on the issues. Articles like yours do no one any good. Why do you continue to fan the flames?
It’s Huffington Post. I wonder if it’s all tongue in cheek?
I’m not a fan of theirs anyway. For several reasons.
I go back and forth on them. What don’t you like?
Thank you.
I don’t call myself an attachment parent, but to onlookers, I totally would be considered one. My kid (who just turned three) is JUST beginning to fully wean – and only at my very strong encouragement. He still bed shares. We’ve tried otherwise, but he really isn’t ready yet, and we have no reason to force it.
Am I unhappy or complaining? NO.
I adore my kid. He is really smart (I’m not just saying that – he is reading and writing and has been since before he turned three), is very healthy, and is overall a happy kid.
He’s not perfect. He is strong willed and has his share of breakdowns. But I adore him and wouldn’t change the way we’ve done things because it worked FOR HIM. Another child? Maybe we’d alter a few things. But it just depends.
I’m so sick of moms writing posts that put down other mother’s choices. Can’t we support each other?
Thank you for your response to that post. It was needed.
So glad you liked it!
I agree – what’s the point in putting down another mom’s choices? I’m all for standing up for what you believe when it actually impacts the health of the child… but when it’s just a parenting style issue? Plus, why is there always so much condescending disdain in these pieces? Grrr!
I have nothing against attachment parenting but I definitely didn’t do it, because it didn’t fit how I wanted to/was able to raise my daughter. As a working mom, I just don’t have that luxury/ability. I have to be able to drop her off at daycare and have a scheduled day there. I’m very fortunate in having a wonderful in home daycare. I couldn’t have asked for a better environment for her.
I’ve seen terribly behaved and well behaved children on both ends of the parenting scale and don’t really believe that any one style is the problem as much as it is a general issue of parents giving in to their child’s every demand instead of teaching responsibility, respect and the ‘joys’ of earning something instead of being handed everything. I was not able to breastfeed so I don’t feel like I can comment on anyone else’s decision to do so and for how long. I did not co-sleep because I was waking up every 5 minutes when my daughter made any sort of noise. She was fine, I was a mess. She was in her own crib by 8 weeks old. She also, by herself, started sleeping at night. I attended her every time she cried out, it just happened less and less. I have a sleeper. Not every parent does and I am so grateful for mine. Now, at a year, she will still occasionally cry out, but it doesn’t even last long enough for me to get out of bed and see what’s wrong. She goes right back to sleep.
What I have noticed, (and I fully admit, i have had these thoughts, I just know better than to open my mouth) is that once you become a parent, you think you become an expert. You read ‘such and such’ a book. Therefore it is the ONLY book and the ONLY method and anyone who hasn’t read ‘such and such’ a book absolutely must immediately or they’re a complete failure as a parent. You have used ‘this and that’ method of sleep training, so that’s clearly the only one and anyone who doesn’t is doomed to create a monster of a child who will never sleep a full night ever. Every conversation about babies turns into your kids versus other’s kids and why what you did/have done/are doing is so much better than what everyone else is doing. It’s all of a sudden a competition. It’s the parenting Olympics and your child is the obvious gold medalist because you used ‘a b and c’ parenting. People seem to forget, that not all babies are the same. Not all babies learn the same at the same speeds. Some babies need more, some babies need less, some babies sleep more, some less. Everyone seems to understand that kids in grade school learn differently and information needs to be presented in a variety of methods to make sure everyone has the opportunity and ability to learn. Babies and toddlers aren’t any different and it’s each parent’s job to find the method that works for their child. THEIR child, not YOUR child. People in general need to learn respect and acceptance. No one else out there is responsible for how my daughter is raised. My husband and i are. We’ll choose the methods that work for our family. Just because it works for us, doesn’t mean it will work for anyone else. As long as she grows up happy, healthy, secure and confident in herself and our love for her, I know we’ve done a good job.
Yeah, I definitely hear you on that point. When Addie was younger I know I went through a phase where I was sure that if people would just read the books I had read, they would see that I was “right”. I still think that many parents would choose AP if they knew more about it, but I also fully recognize that it doesn’t work for everyone and every parent has to figure out what will work for her and her child.
At this point, I just really want to spread the word about it. It’s not an all-or-nothing thing – you can learn about it and then choose to incorporate the aspects of it that mesh with your lifestyle. I just don’t like when commentators like this woman generalize and then bash the whole thing.
I haven’t read that article (yet – I probably will now), but I will say this. We do some things that are sort of in line with AP. We co-slept until Ruby was 2 months old (because that’s the only way she would sleep at night). My husband and I use wraps and carriers a lot. Mostly because she wouldn’t tolerate the stroller at all until she was 4 months old and we just got in the habit of carrying her. She still prefers the carriers and it seems way more portable/convenient to me. I breastfeed. I do it in public because it’s convenient, and I plan to continue until it feels like time to move on (for either of us). I don’t know or care when that is – 8 months, 3 years, whatever.
On the other hand, we have done some sleep training. Mostly because I just couldn’t envision a scenario in which Ruby would one day learn to put herself to sleep without it. And I don’t always immediately pick her up if she starts fussing or crying. Sometimes I need to go to the bathroom, or switch a load of laundry. And sometimes (or a lot of times…) she just makes me mad. Yeah, I know she can’t help it. I know I chose to have a baby. But my heart isn’t always in the mode of – everything is about her.
So sometimes I get mad at AP. Because I feel like I should be doing more of it. When I let her cry for a minute I feel like a bad parent, and I direct those feelings towards things like AP. I sort of suspect that other people feel guilty too and that’s why they lash out. If only we could all just accept that most of us are doing our best and that that’s enough.
Just read the article… her child was definitely a “good” sleeper. There’s no way she can take credit for that.
I think it’s totally in line with AP to sometimes let your child cry for a couple minutes, especially a baby who’s over four months. It’s the idea of letting them sit in a crib alone crying for hours (literally, I know people who let their babies cry for two hours or more), that is so anathema to AP. Frankly, at a certain age your baby needs to learn that you have needs, too. And I don’t think that AP denies that. Maybe some parents can’t get a handle on that balance, but that doesn’t mean people (like this woman) should discredit the whole idea.
And I know, right?? She totally just had a good sleeper. If you’ve never had a bad sleeper, you don’t understand and you just do NOT get to comment on it.
Thank you for this. You are the first AP practicing mother who I have heard point out that AP theory is theory related to infancy and attachment. I’ve had lots to say against AP only because of this discrepancy. The seemingly inability to move forward and develop along with your child. Continuing to apply concepts of infancy when a child is 5 is problematic. Yours was the first intelligent, non-abrasive presentation of AP that I have heard. I appreciate a discussion that isn’t so fundamentalist and hostile.
I’m so glad you liked the post! I agree – you have to respect your child’s growing independence. It’s terrifying sometimes to watch your baby grow up, but you have to let him… I always strive to be non-fundamentalist!!
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Remember, too, that attachment parenting, by mellowing a child’s behavior, makes it easier to go places with your child. You don’t have to feel tied down to your house or apartment and a lifestyle that includes only babies.