Category: API News & Events

Dr. Isabelle Fox on API Live – August 24

“Meeting Children’s Need for a Stable Caregiver”

Register now and join API Live! for a special Teleseminar on August 24 at 9PM EST / 6 PM PST as API Co-Founder and co-author of Attached at the Heart Lysa Parker and former NBC anchor Lu Hanessian stable caregiving with Dr. Isabelle Fox. Topics to be discussed include:

  • Bonding and Attachment
  • What Happens when Caregivers Change
  • Parental versus Substitute Care
  • Separation and Custody
  • and MORE!

You can support API’s mission and take advantage of the knowledge and experience API Live’s special guest by signing up today. Every dollar of your sign up fee goes toward education, support and outreach for parents in need. And don’t worry about last minute conflicts–everyone who signs up will receive a link to download the MP3 the week after the event.

Ina May Gaskin to Discuss Birth on API Live

Ina May Gaskin, author of Spiritual Midwifery and Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth, will be joining API Co-Founder and co-author of Attached at the Heart Barbara Nicholson and former NBC anchor Lu Hanessian on API Live on July 27, 2009. Gaskin will be speaking on the topic ”Special Delivery”: The Gift of Loving Your Best Birth (and Making Peace with Plan B).

Topics to be covered during the live teleseminar include

  • Knowing your body and your rights
  • How to have your baby with no regrets
  • What you won’t hear in your birthing classes
  • Why we get stuck in the perfect portrait of birth and how it’s not our true goal
  • Why things don’t always turn out the way we wanted them to (and that’s OK too)
  • and MORE

For more information on this event, visit the API Live blog or register for the teleseminar online.

API’s 15th Anniversary Celebration – August 29-30 in Nashville

You are invited to meet the foremost authorities of API’s Parenting Principles at a one-time special event to celebrate API’s 15th Anniversary August 29 and 30 in Nashville, TN. This event has something for everyone so register everyone now and help us celebrate 15!

The weekend event will feature a never-before think-tank event and reception on attachment parenting by attachment parenting experts Dr. William and Martha Sears, sleep expert Dr. James McKenna, LLL founder Mary Ann Cahill, parent education leader Dr. Stephen Bavolek, separation/custody and AP expert Dr. Isabelle Fox, hosted by noted parenting author and television anchor/entrepreneur Lu Hanessian, and honored guests API founders and authors Barbara Nicholson and Lysa Parker. This is a celebration so the think-tank event and reception cost is only $10! Be sure to register and book your accommodations now.

Other weekend features include an evening concert by popular singer-songwriter performers and their adult children, parent/child events around Nashville arranged just for the weekend, a book signing event, a special session on attachment and separated families, a silent auction, and capped off with a midday family concert by the awesome Roger Day! And you can come to just hang out by the hotel pool with some really great AP families! Be sure to sign up and learn more about this special gathering—we can’t wait to get together with you!

If you are an organization, company or small business and are interested in helping to sponsor this event—with lots of benefits, we want to hear from you too! Contact Kit Dulin, API’s Advertising Manager.

Striving Toward Controlled Chaos

Striving Toward Controlled Chaos
By Rita Brhel, editor of The Attached Family

I am naturally a very high-strung perfectionist with a short fuse. A bad combination for relationships of any sort. After seven years of marriage, my husband would now describe me as much more mellow than when he first met me. I can walk through a kitchen with dishes that haven’t been washed for three days, a table covered in an odd assortment of items with a small surface cleared off to allow for a family dinner, and a mine field of kids toys without batting my eye once. I can now look past many of the messes that come with a busy family with young children, especially the messes that come with a laidback husband who just doesn’t care if things aren’t perfectly in order and the messes that come with two toddlers. I just strive toward “controlled chaos” – that is, things don’t have to be perfect; they just have to be good enough.

It is through attachment parenting, specifically the approach advocated through Attachment Parenting International, that I have found a way to control my natural tendencies to demand too much from everyone around me including myself and then punish them when they don’t meet my expectations. I credit Attachment Parenting International not only for creating a truly joyful family atmosphere in my home but also for finally giving me peace and especially for saving my marriage.
Continue reading “Striving Toward Controlled Chaos”

API’s July Membership Special – 15% Discount

Did you miss out on the 15th Anniversary membership promotion that was running in the month of June? We’ve decided to continue to provide a membership special for you during the month of July as well. Buy one family, professional associate, or gift membership for a 15% discount. Don’t let this membership promotion pass you by! (Support groups will retain their $15 portion of the membership).

Special Edition of The Attached Family Magazine

The special Attached at the Heart edition of The Attached Family Magazine (PDF) magazine is now available.

This edition features a preview of API’s 15th Anniversary Celebration, an interview with API co-founders and book authors Barbara Nicholson and Lysa Parker, information on a free drawing, details on the $15 API Membership Special, and so much more.

Weighing in on Breastfeeding in Public

I feel so lucky that I live in a place that is so open to nursing in public. I have never been asked to cover up, given funny looks, or asked to move to the bathroom to nurse my children. But I know so many mothers who are terrified of nursing in public because they have been questioned, given looks, and asked to move.

As much as those stories infuriate me, today I feel there is cause to celebrate…and to weigh in. Some of you probably already have accounts on Opposing Views because they seem to cover quite a few topics (spanking among them) that AP parents care about. Today they launched the debate: Should Women Breastfeed in Public?

The reason we should celebrate is because it’s not even a debate–no one stepped up to take the “No” position on this one. I choose to make this mean that we’re winning the battle against ignorance and I commend the three wonderful experts who spelled out all the many reasons to support nursing in public. But your votes still send a strong message to any dissenters (and as long as neanderthals people like Barbara Walters are around, there will always be dissenters on this topic), so go on, vote to support a baby’s right to eat in public.

While you’re there, you might also want to vote on these two: