API Blog – Page 17

How API supports parents with — and without — access to parental leave

Editor’s note: Thank you for helping Attachment Parenting International (API) observe Attachment Parenting Month 2015 in October as we explored the theme, “Parental Presence: Birthing Families, Strengthening Society.” API Leader and API’s KnowledgeBase Coordinator Artimesia Yuen has compiled a research paper to help you continue discussions in your families and communities on the importance of parental leave following the birth of a baby and the incredible value of maximizing parental presence in early childhood.

API advocates knowledge and practices that value and maximize parental leave, recognizing parental presence with a child fosters early secure attachment and benefits families, businesses and societies.

Parental leave is an issue that touches the majority of adults around the world as parents are commonly employed outside of the home. Many countries have implemented national policies that prioritize and value the unique and irretrievable impact that parents have in the early years of their child’s development. The collective international policies represent a global consensus that the United States has not yet considered on a national level.

Only very recently, a few U.S. city and state governments have offered forms of parental leave. The media has been tracking high-profile businesses that have been initiating their own parental leave policies. While the U.S. Federal government offers its own employee benefits, there is not yet a national policy providing these benefits to all U.S. parents.

Momentum is growing for parental leave in the United States, and we have the benefit of a wealth of examples and longitudinal research provided by initiatives in other countries. All of this experience and research, including of U.S. economic research, complements the findings of decades of attachment research.

The U.S. workplace culture, and that of many other countries, is such that even parents and decision makers who recognize the benefits of parental leave may still experience one or more of these pervasive cultural barriers or responses:

* Businesses offering or contemplating offering parental leave may experience real or perceived fears of:

Loss from temporary slow down or loss of valuable employees, skills and functions
Competitive disadvantage
Higher costs, lost opportunities and lost profitability.

* Employees taking or contemplating taking parental leave may experience real or perceived fears of:

Outright job loss
Inability to afford unpaid leave or severe financial difficulty
Inability to tolerate potential lower status and/or pay
Reduced earnings trajectory over time — i.e., work-cultural stigma.

Additional factors that can present barriers to parental leave may include:

Societal and cultural norms do not support and sometimes undermine leave.
Loss and risk aversion are well-known cognitive heuristics impact leave decisions.
Our nation and economy differ in significant cultural, political, economic and philosophical ways from other advanced nations that offer generous leave. The translation of other successes is not always clear for U.S. business and policy decision makers.
Time frames and incentives may be mismatched if leave decisions produce “fuzzy,” long-run results when policy makers and businesses seek clear impact over shorter time horizons.

Moving beyond these self-reinforcing fears will require more parents, employers and governments step up to “be the change.” These pioneers and would-be pioneers require support and a broad groundswell of advocacy to stand behind them and propose the policies that all U.S. families deserve.

For more than 20 years, Attachment Parenting International has been working to spread the knowledge that early secure attachment and consistent and loving care are vital to infant development and well-being. API not only brings this research to families, communities and professionals, but has also developed API’s Eight Principles of Parenting and accredited networks of local, personal support that helps sustain healthy parenting and care practices.

API’s Role in Parental Leave

Promoting the benefits of parental presence, attachment and parenting particularly after birth and in the early, formative years.
Continued work toward raising up the socially important, economically valuable role of the parents in child mental health and development.
Continued direct parent support around choices that favor healthy, close parent-child relationships.
Support parental goals toward long-run workplace change that benefit parents, children and family well-being as critical to societal success.

Support for parents who do not have access to parental leave:

API’s Eight Principles of Parenting provide support for parents in a number of ways to help provide healthy parent-child relationships, especially when parent-child time is limited. These supports might include the following practices:

Feed with love and respect — API supports parents in establishing and maintaining breastfeeding, pumping and evening reunions that support these practices in feeding and closeness as well as rest for the parents.
Use nurturing touch — API supports parents in healthy and affectionate touching, holding, cuddling and even carrying their young children in soft carriers as a way to regularly reconnect after being apart.
Ensure safe sleep physically and emotionally — API supports parents in healthy and safe ways to satisfy both the parent needs for required rest and their young child’s needs for closeness and reconnection after being apart. Safety is paramount.
Provide consistent, loving care — API supports parents in considerations for providing a healthy caregiving experience for their young children.
Strive for balance in personal and family life — API supports parents in considering the multiple ways parents can maintain and restore personal and family equilibrium through the many changes of childhood. Parents are supported in any general emotional experience that may result from being apart from their children sooner, earlier or more than desired.

Support for parents who have access to parental leave:

API’s Eight Principles of Parenting provide support for parents in a number of ways to help provide healthy parent-child relationships in situations where parent-child time must transition, even when it’s maximized. These supports might include the following practices:

Feed with love and respect — API supports parents in establishing and maintaining a variety of strategies in response to changing parent and child needs around breastfeeding, pumping, feeding over time and the relationship with feeding and parent-child reunions.
Use nurturing touch — API supports parents in healthy and affectionate touching, holding, cuddling and even carrying their young children in soft carriers as a normative way to be together as well as a way to satisfy reconnection needs after being apart.
Ensure safe sleep physically and emotionally — API supports parents in healthy and safe ways to satisfy both the parent needs for required rest and their young child’s needs for closeness and reconnection after being apart. Safety is paramount.
Provide consistent, loving care — API supports parents in considerations for providing a healthy caregiving experience for their young children and support for transitions to non-parental care.
Strive for balance in personal and family life — API supports parents in considering the multiple ways parents can maintain and restore personal and family equilibrium through the many changes of childhood and the parent work status. Parents are supported in any general emotional experience that may result from being apart from their children sooner, earlier or more than desired. Parents are supported in any general emotions around the differences in the pace of life and competencies that may exist between career and 24/7 parenting.

Interested in learning more? Read API’s AP Month 2015 Research Paper in full, including results from selected research studies.

Kim John Payne is tonight!

Today is the day! Kim John Payne is speaking on “Simplicity Parenting” tonight at 9:00 pm EST/6:00 pm PST during a special API Live teleseminar as part of the 2015 Attachment Parenting Month: “Parental Presence: Birthing Families, Strengthening Society” — helping families worldwide put in practice what we know is critical for investing in early secure attachment.

Very basically, our lives cannot be too busy for our children. But in our very busy lives, what can we do to slow down and simplify in order to give our children the presence they need to thrive?

Kim John Payne, world-renown author of Simplicity Parenting, is the very expert to inspire any family — no matter their life circumstances — on how to give a bit more presence to their children. He helps parents look at 4 realms of their home life to reduce stress on both children and their parents, allowing room for connection, creativity and relaxation:

Decluttering
Increasing predictability
Soothing schedules
Unplugging.

Kim John Payne and his Simplicity Parenting is a vital link in connected parenting. This API Live teleseminar promises to renew your focus on life balance, both for yourself and your family!

Enjoy this huge value for only $9 for API Members. (It’s free to join Attachment Parenting International (API), and you can join before you register for the API Live teleseminar to enjoy the discount!)

Register now to get a “seat” to tonight’s event — from the comfort of your own home or wherever you happen to be, as you join the audience via your phone. And if you can’t be on the teleseminar tonight, register anyway — everyone who registers gets a recording of this API Live teleseminar to listen to at their convenience.

Creating secure attachments through parental leave

By Barbara Nicholson, cofounder of Attachment Parenting International (API) and coauthor of Attached at the Heart with Lysa Parker

Editor’s note: This post was originally published through Parent Compass, an occasional message from API’s cofounders looking in-depth on how Attachment Parenting (AP) intersects with wider society. In celebration of AP Month this October, the latest Parent Compass explores this year’s theme: “Parental Presence: Birthing Families, Strengthening Society.” Sign up to receive future issues of this API newsletter, and we hope you are inspired this AP Month to continue striving to balance parental presence with work responsibilities.

“We have decades of research that tells us how important it is that a bond is established between parents and young children beginning at birth,” says Dr. Jack P. Shonkoff, Director of the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University. “The need for time to form secure attachments is critically important. It’s one of the most important things you can do to build a foundation for a lifetime of healthy development.”

This quote was in reaction to the announcement that Netflix is offering up to 1 year of paid parental leave for its employees who give birth or adopt. Of course we rejoice at such progressive policies, but the sad truth is that few companies currently see the long-term benefit to their employees to instigate such policies.

Dr. Shonkoff went on to say in his remarks: “Babies need a sense of safety, predictability and responsiveness. We know from research that all areas of development — whether it’s cognitive development, emotional well-being or social development — has its foundation in this secure relationships. We do a lousy job as a society supporting parents after the birth of their babies. It’s unconscionable with all the deep scientific understanding we have now. It makes no sense to not offer more of that flexibility and support.”

Because of the overwhelming research, and our advocacy for infants and toddlers, Attachment Parenting International is in full support of strong parental leave policies, similar to those in many countries around the world. Sweden’s policy is probably one of the most generous, with 480 days of paid parental leave.

In the meantime, we are amazed at the creativity and dedication of parents to find solutions that will keep their bond with their children strong. From tag-teaming work schedules to enlisting grandparents and other invested family and friends, and creating cooperative childcare with trusted caregivers, many parents are finding solutions to keep their attachments strong. Some parents obtain loans to stay home longer: Many credit unions and banks will give loans in support of a family need, just like they would finance a car. But later this loan can cause a problem if you are not financially secure to repay. And unless you have scotland debt help near you which can help you in repaying the finances over a period of time with the help of their deeds, I don’t think it is a good plan taking such loan.

Lysa helps a lot with the care of her 2-year-old granddaughter, and I am often on-call for family friends that are juggling young children and work schedules. We feel so much compassion for these children who need consistency and trusting relationships — not a constantly changing cast of caregivers who may love children but who are also looking for higher paying jobs and less stress. We are amazed that even in the best university daycares, there is a large turnover every semester of childcare providers. There is such disconnect with the research and its application!

API Support Groups can be a wonderful resource for parents who do not have extended families nearby. Finding friends that have the same parenting values is another critical component in deciding on a non-parental caregiver.

As we move into another election cycle, we encourage all of you to pay attention to candidates who seem to have a particular understanding and compassion for babies and young children, and strong supportive policies. A strong mayor or city council member can have a tremendous impact on community awareness and progressive policies. Look into your state’s policies, too, as they vary tremendously. You might be pleased to know that your state has stronger leave policies then your place of work, and you can stagger the leave of each parent, allowing for more time at home.

Good luck to all parents who are looking for creative solutions! Talk to your local API Leaders, API Support Group members and Attachment Parenting families from around the world on API’s online Neighborhood forum for ideas, too.

Inspired to better balance parental presence with the busyness of our lives?

API announces a special API Live teleseminar event on October 19 at 9:00 pm EST/6:00 pm PST as part of AP Month. Call in from the comfort of your home or while on the go to listen to and learn about Simplicity Parenting from Kim John Payne. Register today! Can’t make it that day? Everyone who signs up gets a recording of the teleseminar to listen to on their own time.

Kim John Payne helps families recognize the importance of parental presence, even more so in this day and age when so many pressures are taking the focus away from connected parenting. Through this teleseminar, you’ll walk away with a renewed focus for yourself and your family. To get a taste of his message, follow along on the API Reads discussion of his book, Simplicity Parenting.

Happy Peace Day from API!

International Peace Day — today, September 21, as declared by the United Nations — advocates the theme: “Partnerships for Peace: Dignity for All.”

This observance aims to highlight the importance of all segments of society to work together to strive for peace — asking us all to create a more just, stable and peaceful world.

API Leaders and staff take this to heart, every day passionately working to carry out Attachment Parenting International‘s mission:

to educate and support all parents in raising secure, joyful and empathic children in order to strengthen families and create a more compassionate world.

Happy Peace Day!

Attachment grandparenting…what’s your role?

By Lysa Parker, cofounder of Attachment Parenting International (API) and coauthor of Attached at the Heart with Barbara Nicholson

Editor’s note: Happy Grandparents Day! The grandparent-grandchild bond can be an important relationship in any child’s life, as a complement to a secure parent-child attachment. Today, API encourages grandparents to explore their influence in their grandchild’s life as an advocate for — and available support, as needed, to — the parents.

My husband Jim and I have a blended family, and our first experience with grandchildren began 14 years ago when our twin grandsons were born. We discovered that Attachment Grandparenting requires a very active role in several ways.

Advocating for the Family

Morgan, my step-daughter, was a single mother. I was able to attend my grandsons’ births and hold them soon after. The nurses offered to take them to the nursery, because their mother was recovering from a Cesarean section and was very weak, but Jim and I felt very protective of our grandsons and told them we would hold the babies. We held and rocked them for as long as we could and as often as we could until their mother felt better.

I helped Morgan with breastfeeding when she was having difficulty getting her sleepy babies to latch, and Jim and I helped Morgan prepare for safe bedsharing with twins and made sure she ate healthy and rested often. Morgan breastfed her twins for almost a year, and they thrived.

We proudly wore our grandsons around the neighborhood and savored our time with them until they moved back to Houston, Texas, USA, when they were about 10 months old. We missed them terribly, and we weren’t able to see them as often as we wanted. Still on some deep and inexplicable level, we made a connection with them that no distance could sever. Whenever we would visit, they always wanted to sit on our laps or be next to us. At night, we would help them get ready for bed and they would ask us to carry them to bed, as if remembering the many times we held and rocked them when they were babies.

In the blink of an eye, they became teenagers, and if we are lucky we see them once a year, but the bond is there. There’s no doubt to us as to the mysterious and profound nature of that bond established in just the first weeks and months of life.

Why is Grandparenting So Wonderful?

I’ve always heard from others about how wonderful it is to be a grandparent. I feel so fortunate to have the opportunity to live close to my granddaughter and build our relationship. We enjoy supporting her parents and being a resource for them, something we never had as young parents. Being a grandparent is freeing: We don’t have as many unrealistic expectations and stressors that we did when younger.

Making Ripples

We, at API, often talk about the ripple effect we can create by the little changes each of us makes in our families and in our communities. I want to share how empowering and far-reaching some experiences can be.

Morgan grew up in California, USA, so we had a long-distance relationship with her that included summer visits. She was not exposed to breastfeeding when she was growing up, other than when she herself was breastfed for a short time as an infant. Nor did she have a lot of exposure to caring for children. So the fact that she was able to breastfeed her twin boys for as long as she did was due to her living with us and getting a lot of support from me and her father.

Years later, after moving to Houston with her babies, Morgan had a friend who gave birth to twins — one of whom had special needs — in a local hospital. Morgan encouraged her friend to breastfeed. While Morgan was visiting her friend at the hospital, a nurse came into the room and was shocked that Morgan’s friend was attempting to breastfeed the infants and discouraged her from doing so. That’s when Morgan told the nurse that she was able to successfully nurse twins and so could her friend, that in no uncertain terms should the nurse be discouraging breastfeeding for this mother.

I felt such pride for Morgan that her own breastfeeding experience gave her such courage and conviction to help another mother. No doubt the ripple effect continues in other ways.

Offering Support

Our most recent experience in Attachment Grandparenting began in May 2013 when our granddaughter, Layla McCartney Parker, was born to our son, Jamison, and daughter-in-law, Jordan.

As experienced parents know, there can many real and potential challenges during pregnancy and childbirth, many of which first-time parents just don’t know. There are a lot of choices and a lot of decisions to be made, and unless you’re clear about what you want, it can be overwhelming to say the least. There are important decisions to be made that can have a huge impact on birth and breastfeeding experiences.

Jordan was unfamiliar with Attachment Parenting and new to API’s Eight Principles of Parenting. When I offered, Jordan and Jamison were very open to learning about Attachment Parenting and allowed me to help them navigate through the myriad options, such as finding supportive childbirth classes, creating a birth plan, attending La Leche League meetings and creating a safe sleep environment ahead of time. They knew, too, that my husband and I would be their support system after the baby arrived, if and when they needed us.

Both Jordan and Jamison really wanted a natural birth but were uncertain how to make that happen. That’s where local hynobirthing classes were immensely helpful, as well as the support of a caring and experienced doula. Jordan arrived at the hospital at 9 centimeters, and with Jamison and the doula by her side trying to keep her relaxed and focused, Layla was born within an hour — all naturally.

Just when we thought it was all over, the nurses wanted to give pitocin to help Jordan recover. That blind-sided everyone! Natural birth is natural birth, right?

Since I hadn’t arrived at the hospital yet, my son anxiously texted me about what he should do and was confused because he didn’t expect this after his wife just finished a natural birth. So was I, but I assured him that pitocin wasn’t necessary to help Jordan “recover” and that putting the baby to the breast would help her recover just as quickly by helping to expel the placenta. They refused the pitocin, and everything went great from that point on, from skin-to-skin holding to breastfeeding.

Enriching the Grandchild’s Life

This time around, we have the opportunity to be engaged in our granddaughter’s life on a regular basis, especially since her daddy is the stay-at-home parent for now. The love we feel for her is intoxicating! I will often get the urge to see her and call to ask if I can come over and play. Usually my son is eager for a little break in his day.

Babies are born to expect at least 4 adults to enrich their lives. Jim and I have made a conscious effort to see her at least twice a week, so we are very familiar faces and voices.

I have developed a special relationship with Layla in terms of singing lullabies to her. She was just a couple months old when I began to sing to her, and she would look at me intensely with a face of recognition whenever I sang a familiar song. We know infants like repetition, so I make sure I sing the older lullabies and add new ones along the way. It gives me great joy to see her big smile when I sing to her. She loves music and has even gone to hear her “Poppy” — Jim is a musician — play his guitar in concert without making a peep. She is mesmerized by the guitar and music. For me, music is the language of the soul, and I hope we always keep that special relationship with her and nurture her love for music.

Layla is 10 months old now, and she is the light of our lives. I wear her as often as I can when I care for her. I rock her and sing her to sleep and love to play with her when she’s awake, delighting in every little milestone. And I delight in watching my son and his wife grow into their parenting role. We also love watching our twin grandsons grow into young men and cherish our relationship with them.

Do I sound like I’m in love with Attachment Grandparenting? You bet I am!

Practical wisdom and encouragement, engaging conversation, at your fingertips!

Practical wisdom and encouragement. Engaging conversation.

Your favorite authors and speakers in a rare chat with host Lu Hanessian and API’s Cofounders.

Martha Sears… Bill Sears… Peggy O’Mara… Gordon Neufield… Jim McKenna… Ina May Gaskin… Scott Noelle… and 21 more.

In their own voices, style and humor, with their parenting insights for you on… Tantrums… Play… Needs vs. Wants… Parenting Myths… Relationships… Balance… Permissive Parenting… Cosleeping… Peaceful Homes… Birth… and much more.

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Listen at your convenience — on a run, in the car, doing chores — or gift one to a friend!

“API Live” podcast downloads share the great connections and information from our API community. We invite you to check them out and listen today!

He just wants to be held

By Julinda Adams

I am the mother of two boys ages 15 and 9.

Earlier this year, when I read the APtly Said post, “Using presence to raise independent children,” it reminded me of my own experience, and I left the following comment:

“I, too, had a grocery store experience with a stranger’s advice, but mine was the opposite of yours and had a major impact on my life. My firstborn, as a newborn, needed to be held a lot and nursed a lot — almost constantly. At home, I held him constantly, but when I was out, I thought he would just lie in his car seat or carrier like other babies I’d seen. (I also thought he would sleep peacefully alone in a crib, but that’s a different story!)

So I was in the store, he was in the carrier in the child seat area of the cart, and he was wailing. I was trying to console him, but he didn’t stop. Two older ladies came upon us, and one of them said, “I think he just wants to be held.”

He just wants to be held. In that moment, I realized that it didn’t matter where we were or what other babies did or how other parents acted: My baby wanted to be held. From that time on, he was only in the seat if we were in the car, he was asleep, he was content or I couldn’t hold him for some reason. Many times, I walked through a store holding him — or later his brother — sometimes attempting to nurse, while trying to push a cart.”

The images we see in the media often show a detached form of parenting. Babies only appear when needed for the story line, or even as props. On the screen, they are quiet and require minimal interaction, unless the script calls for something else. When they are not in a scene, they are out of sight and no thought is given to them. So the baby lying quietly until the parents are ready to interact seems normal.

Some babies may do OK with that. My firstborn made it known from birth that he expected to be physically attached, and we complied most of the time. When we were out, though, I expected him to act like those media babies and lie quietly. When he didn’t, I didn’t know what to do. The comment of the older lady in the grocery store surprised me, and then I thought, Oh, of course. He always wants to be held.

And far beyond realizing it was fine to hold him whenever he wanted, I realized I could listen to him — and my instincts.

I wish I could say I never again worried about what people thought about my parenting, but of course I did. I still do. And while many people find responsive parenting in infancy produces socially independent kids, that didn’t happen for us. Our son remained “clingy.” He needed us by his side as he ventured out. We supported him by being there when we could and “weaning” him from our presence gently.

He’s 15 now, and honestly, new situations still throw him off balance. And we still support him when he needs us.

Editor’s note: Some children are more likely to be “clingy,” or slow to warm to new situations. This is due to temperament, an inborn personality difference. Attachment Parenting works for these and other “spirited” children, because this parenting approach can more easily adapt to each child’s unique abilities. Learn more on “Different, Not Disordered” and “Emotions, Limits and Spirited Kids” on The Attached Family, the online magazine of Attachment Parenting International (API). Or read a collection of API’s articles for parents of spirited children in the “Loving Uniquely” issue of the print magazine.

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