Author: Samantha

Attachment Parenting International's Executive Director and Business Management Coordinator, Samantha Gray, works with API's staff, Board of Directors and Business Management Team members to ensure that our organization is continuing to meet the mission and vision of API

Naming Changes and Changing Names this AP Month 2018!

API is a hub of information and a community of support to advance Attachment Parenting practices–a collective advocating compassion. After nearly 25 years, API is expanding how it operates so that it can provide support and information to even more families. We will be sharing updates all month long and we invite you to join us!

API thanks the hundreds of dedicated leaders for fostering a strong foundation and recognizes the impact of their service. The groups these leaders have created provide critical parenting support. Moving to a collective environment as part of API’s changes, you will notice new names for these groups. You may notice other changes as groups focus their activities on the needs of their local communities. You will, however, still find them focused on Attachment Parenting, and their information on the API website. Search by location to learn meeting times, or contact a leader for support.

API supports all groups wanting to promote API Principles. API is taking this further by now making all of its information openly available. To begin with, API is inviting all API Principle-espousing groups to list their group and meeting information. If you would like to include your group, complete this form about your group and meeting times, also affirming the group supports the API Principles. Group events will appear on the API homepage, as well as the group searchable site at www.attachmentparenting.org/groups. Groups are offered an “API Principles support badge” to post on their pages to demonstrate their support to parents.

Inclusion in the API group and event listings do not imply API approval or responsibility for groups. Parents should validate group activity against API Principles and other other articles found on the API website.

Keep following along this AP Month for more updates and additional resources coming as part of this collective to nurture children for a more compassionate world!

Safety and Security

Until we strongly address the root causes of hatred, the world is simply not a safer place. Feelings and actions related to arrogance and hatred do not abate with force, they only grow. Still, our proclamations of a safer world clearly show how much we desire to trust and live peaceably among each other.

This is why it is imperative that our time, attention, and resources be targeted–or at least not neglected to the degree that they are in our greater society–at what causes young people to be blindly swayed or coerced into destructive movements for a sense of belonging, love, and duty. To make the world a safer place, rather, it is raising our adults from very young ages with compassion, strength, confidence, love and empathy for everyone, not just their own. It is how we raise our children, how we treat our children and foster secure attachments, how we model love and compassion to them everyday as they grow into adults that truly changes the world. And it is these very origins of empathy and compassion, when fostered, that mediate the symptoms and pathways of violence and hatred: poverty, injustice, and inequality.
 
Vitally connected is how we support and inform those who are raising children, the parents, grandparents, and other caregivers. We must work to allay the stress and challenges of making a livelihood that make quality and intentional parenting a struggle. We need to value these mothers, fathers, grandparents, and caregivers and equip them with ongoing support, excellent and useful information, and encouragement and recognition for the important work they are doing. We need to raise awareness about attachment parenting.
 
This is why I believe so passionately in the work of Attachment Parenting International, carrying out this mission for the past 17 years: “To educate and support all parents in raising secure, joyful and empathic children in order to strengthen families and create a more compassionate world.” We cling to various strategies and programs to get at the solution to violence in the world, yet I believe it is by engaging in work like API’s and helping API exponentially reach more families that we could make the most difference.

For me, the questioning that arises regarding achieving a safer, more secure world invariably brings me to the importance of putting our energy into helping our children feel secure, loved, and loving from birth through adulthood. The Peace Corps idealism I have has not left me–I see a generation with a new empathy, a secure world for each person, for everyone brought about by parent heroes.