Sonja

A moment of clarity

January 29, 2009

I often struggle to explain to people how Attachment Parenting differs from other parenting styles. For me, one of the touchstones is trying to meet my children’s needs, but I realize that all conscientious parents are trying to meet their children’s needs, even though we may differ in our understanding of what those needs are. [...]

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Trusting my instincts

January 10, 2009

When my son was 16 months old, I decided to try leaving him with a babysitter while I went to a medical appointment.  Up to this point, he’d never been cared for by anyone other than me, my husband, or very occasionally by his grandparents.  He knew the babysitter fairly well, but nonetheless, was miserable [...]

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Hey, that was fun!

October 21, 2008

We took the kids to the farm where our milk and beef comes from today.  We got to see the cows being milked, met the young calves, went for a hay ride, sampled the cheese, and enjoyed beautiful weather. When we got home, my husband John and I remarked to each other that the trip [...]

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The Power of Having Been Parented Well

September 20, 2008

I goofed as a parent yesterday; I explained a scientific fact to my daughter in a way that made her feel rotten. So in the evening, I did what I always do when I feel like I need help with a parenting issue — I talked it over with my husband. As usual, I was [...]

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Dating

August 25, 2008

When my husband and I became parents, we expected parenting to be the focus of our lives. We anticipated that we’d be spending essentially all of our non-work time as a family, taking the children with us when we visited friends, went to restaurants, traveled, and so on. We’d both had this kind of experience [...]

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Parenting Courage

July 21, 2008

Becoming a parent makes us part of one of the world’s largest fraternities. Suddenly, we have something in common with most of the adults we ever meet, which can be a wonderful way to establish bonds with a wide range of people. The potential down side is that since so many people have experience as [...]

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My life with strollers

June 18, 2008

If you had asked me, when my first child was a year old, if I ever thought I’d own a stroller, I would have said no. After all, if I hadn’t needed one up to that point, why would I need one in the future? We’d been all kinds of places without a stroller — [...]

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Toddler Communication

May 19, 2008

When my daughter Erika was a baby, several of my new mom-friends were practicing sign language with their children, but I was never interested. I really couldn’t figure out what the benefit would be, as it didn’t seem to me that I had any trouble understanding what she was trying to communicate. She pointed at [...]

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