Editor’s Pick – Page 3

Editor’s pick: The best autism intervention is based in attachment

Attachment Parenting is based on more than 60 years of solid, interdisciplinary research into parent-child relationships, from infant bonding and breastfeeding to nurturing touch and discipline. We have a long line of researchers — and advocates helping to incorporate their findings into society — to thank for how we look at families today: that how parents interact with their children matter, in real time and over the lifetime, in child development.

One of those scientific greats — recognized by Attachment Parenting International (API) during our 20th Anniversary celebration in 2014 — was the late Stanley Greenspan, an American child psychiatrist who redefined child development. His work led to a change in how parents view the value of nurturing — encouraging them to cultivate connection with their children, excite their child’s interests, and value creativity and curiosity.

Dr. Greenspan also developed Floortime therapy, a treatment approach for children with autism and developmental disabilities that addresses the speech, motor and cognitive skill delays of affected children holistically, via emotional development and interpersonal communication, through the parent-child attachment relationship.

Very simply, Floortime happens when parents get down on the floor and engage with their children through play. Key to Floortime is that the parent enters the child’s games at the child’s development level and follows the child’s lead in those games. A therapist is then able to guide the parents on how to encourage their child to increasingly complex interactions. For example, if the child is tapping an object, the parent could join in by tapping the object in the same manner. To encourage interaction, the parent might then introduce a new object and eventually add a language element.

In observance of World Autism Awareness Day on April 2, this week’s featured article is “What We Know About Autism: Separating the Science From the Scandal” in Vogue, written by health journalist Lauren Mechling.

In the article, we learn that autism is no rare medical condition. In fact 1 in 68 American children — more often boys — is on the spectrum. While it appears that the disorder is much more prevalent than it was 40 years ago, high detection rates rooted in being better informed of early signs is at least partly behind this trend.

While the cause of autism remains largely unknown, researchers agree that it is likely a complex mixture of genetic and environmental factors.

Treatment options seem just as vague, with no drug treatments developed specifically for core autism symptoms. The article continues on, identifying that the most effective treatment currently is early detection combined with intervention therapies aimed at helping young children build neural pathways through face-to-face interaction with a caregiver during Floortime.

And that’s thanks to Dr. Greenspan.

API Resources for Parenting & Autism

Many parents of children on the spectrum find attachment-based parenting choices to be critical to developing positive relationships with their children. API has many resources for parents of children with autism, including:

Personal stories on APtly Said, API’s blog —

“Mothering autism”

“Attachment Parenting and autism”

“Today is World Autism Awareness Day 2010”

“Saved by Attachment Parenting”

“How not to practice positive discipline“

Professional insight and a few more personal stories on The Attached Family, API’s online magazine —

“An Attachment Parenting approach to autism”

“Autism: Interview with pediatrician Dr. Robert Sears”

“From heartache to hope: Interview with Leisa Hammett of The Autism Society of Middle Tennessee”

“A boy brought back from autism”

“Different, not disordered: Interview with Dr. Barbara Probst“

Additional resources from API —

Audio recording with Dr. Robert Sears about treating autism — only $9

The documentary, “Kids with Cameras,” following children with autism as they learn how to express themselves through films, poems, painting and music — now just $15

Editor’s pick: The role of control vs collaboration in teens’ future relationships

Trust, mutual respect and collaboration are the foundation of a strong relationship, whether the relationship is between spouses, friends, or parent and child.

For a child, the relationship with his or her parents is the first — and most significant — relationship. Parental example has considerable impact on kids, and through our relationship with our child, we model how to engage in relationships.

The Attachment Parenting approach promotes mutual respect and collaboration between the parent and the child, rather than a power struggle, which may lead to different forms of control or manipulation by the parent.

It is important to clarify that Attachment Parenting does not identify with the permissive parenting style where parental boundaries and limits are lacking — nor is Attachment Parenting the same as “helicopter parenting” where the parent is overbearing and demanding, allowing minimal freedom for the child.

This week’s featured article is from Reuters, reporting on a study conducted at the University of Virginia that investigated the negative effects on future relationships of teenagers with controlling parents. The study concluded that teens with controlling parents have difficulties handling disagreements as they get older.

“In this study, we examined psychological control on a continuum, and found that the more psychological control parents exerted, the more difficulties teens had establishing a sense of independence and closeness during a disagreement with close friends or romantic partners,” psychologist Barbara Oudekerk told Reuters:

The Scientific American referenced the same study and mentioned that “separate findings suggest that parents who explain the reasons behind their rules and turn disagreements into conversations leave youngsters better prepared for future disputes.”

When we explain to our kids why we reach our decisions and get them involved in the decision making process, they grow to understand that there is reasoning behind our decisions. Mommy or daddy didn’t say “no” because they are the authority figure and the child simply needs to comply — as in “because I’m the boss” or “because I said so!”

When the parent-child relationship is built on collaboration rather than control — as in the case of Attachment Parenting — kids will learn to be cooperative because they know there is a reason behind the parent’s decisions. They will develop their own reasoning, critical and independent thinking as it was cultivated and modeled by the parent.

The child may or may not like or accept our decisions. The goal is not to please the child, but rather that the way we set boundaries serves as building blocks for a relationship that is built on trust and respect. Furthermore, we teach our kids how to navigate through disagreements and reach conflict resolution.

**Photo source: FreeImages.com/Gabriella Fabbri

Editor’s pick: Mindfulness in school and home

A huge part of Attachment Parenting (AP) is learning, and teaching our children, how to be mindful — that ability to calm our minds, connect with our emotions in the moment, work through any conflicting feelings, and respond to others in truth and compassion.

This week, I have two features for my Editor’s Pick. The first is a YouTube video, “Just Breathe,” created by Julie Bayer Salzman and Josh Salzman of Wavecrest Films and inspired by their 5-year-old son talking to a friend about mindfulness exercises he was learning in Kindergarten:

While Attachment Parenting International‘s Eight Principles of Parenting provide families with the parenting behaviors that are shown scientifically to create a secure parent-child attachment, API’s ethos takes Attachment Parenting a step further — to promote a way of living that is based in peace and empathy.

This is where mindfulness fits in.

Clinical psychologist and mindfulness instructor Inga Bohnekamp defines mindfulness in this API post as “presence of heart” and mindful parenting as “parenting from the depths of our hearts,” rather than letting us be guided by a set of pre-fixed, often unreflected, standards or rules about what is right and wrong.

API’s Eight Principles of Parenting aren’t intended to be a set of 8 rules that AP parents must abide to, but rather guides of which parenting behaviors are associated with secure attachment. They are provided for parents who often need that information. Many parents who seek out API’s education and support did not grow up in an environment where they were exposed to consistent nurturing behaviors. API’s Eight Principles of Parenting help parents to get back in touch with their hearts so that they can be intentional about parenting choices, rather than react out of subconscious reasoning that is rooted in early childhood experiences often beyond our conscious memories.

Our childhood experiences may have predisposed us to certain coping skills that do not allow us to easily access the emotions behind our actions, especially in times of stress and strong emotions like anger and fear. Mindfulness is a behavior that can help us teach ourselves how to access those emotions and then be able to act from a place of intention.

This week’s second Editor’s pick is the article, “More Focused, Better Behaved Kids, Through Mindfulness,” by journalist Tori James on My Mother Lode — through which we learn the outcomes of teaching mindfulness to students at a California, USA, elementary school.

It is exciting to see this aspect of Attachment Parenting being incorporated into the school setting, and to hear the overwhelmingly positive feedback from teachers and students.

According to the article, mindfulness not only helps prevent bullying but also improves children’s ability to regulate emotions and calm down, pay attention, feel compassion toward others, change behavior patterns and build emotional resilience to life’s ups and downs.

This is powerful stuff. Mindfulness has the capability to change the trajectory of individual lives, and — when being taught on a community level, such as through school — has the potential for changing whole generations in a community.

In the article, mindfulness instructor Sally Arnold referred to a recent Harvard study that found that people spent about 52% of their lives outside of the present moment, with the balance either worrying about the future or ruminating about the past. By not giving enough thoughtful attention to the present moment, we are setting up ourselves to make decisions based on the emotions from our primitive part of our brain — the amygdala — which is set up to impulsively react in “fight or flight” mode.

Positive discipline educator Kelly Bartlett explains what happens in the brain when we “lose it” in this API article.

Mindfulness retrains our brains to reflect on the moment, creating the space and power to think before we respond. Mindfulness exercises, such as the one that Inga introduces in her API post, allows a person to be able to access their whole brain during stressful moments, including the logic and executive functioning of the prefrontal cortex.

The difference is profound. Consider this scenario:

You walk into your kitchen with a laundry basket full of clean clothes to find your toddler drawing on the wall. How would you react?

Someone reacting out of the amygdala may become very angry very quickly and react in a way that they later regret and that leaves the child in tears.

Someone who is practiced in mindfulness, and therefore able to access the whole brain during stressful moments, is more likely to be able to respond sensitively to the child and effectively discipline through problem-solving without risking their attachment relationship.

Mindfulness does take practice, but each time you practice it, it actively changes the neural pathways in the brain so that it’s easier to respond mindfully in stressful moments rather than continue to struggle with the primitive “fight or flight” reactions.

While it may seem awkward at first, a practice of mindfulness is able to transform the very way you think until you get to the point where you don’t have to even think about being mindful — it just comes naturally!

Think about how profound of an experience it would be for a child to grow up in a mindful home, without the fear of incurring the wrath of a highly reactive parent. Many of us remember feeling that fear ourselves, and understand how that fear (and probably anger) lives on today in our relationships. Teaching our kids to be good people starts with their education, that’s why I sent my kids to Seton College where they have catholic education, so they teach them great family values.

What a gift we can give our children to learn how to be mindful, especially in our moments of stress — and then to be able to model and teach that mindfulness to our children, so that their relationships can be rooted in peace and empathy rather than fear and mistrust.

*First photo: FreeImages.com/Alissa Horton

**Second photo: FreeImages.com/Jenny Rollo

Editor’s pick: Teen cluster suicides begs the question of parenting goals

I’ve come to realize that there is one fundamental question in which the answer is the foundation of our parenting approach. It defines how we, parents, raise our kids.

That question is: How do you define success and happiness?

Think about it…

Attachment Parenting International strives to educate and support parents in raising secure, joyful and empathic children in order to strengthen families and create a more compassionate world. Investing in our children’s well-being will lead the way to their bright futures.

Our society has high expectations for our kids and puts enormous pressure on them to excel in everything they do, to achieve more and do more. With this aim, mainstream culture has forgotten to honor who children truly are. Moreover, our society tends to neglect to recognize and appreciate what children need in order to thrive as sprouting human beings. With the ultimate goals of “excellence” and achievement, some parents have been overlooking the value of socialization, choice and perhaps even sanity.

In recent years, the community of Palo Alto, California, USA, has been shaken by clusters of teenage suicides. In this wealthy and privileged environment, teenagers end their own lives at 4 to 5 times the national average. Journalist Hanna Rosin investigated what makes adolescents in this community feel so helpless and hopeless. Her reflective, detailed analysis published in December in The Atlantic following interviews with teenagers, families, educators and clinicians is eye-opening and noteworthy. Palo Alto highlights the growing trend of focus on high performance and academics, along with the subsequent pressures and stresses on kids.

It’s easy to get tangled up in societal norms and pressures and get lost at sea — simply swimming, like a school of fish, following one another, without hesitation or any real sense of direction. There are times when we need to pause, evaluate where we are and where we need to go, and find the path that will lead us in that direction.

Rosin’s article is among other reports that has now prompted the U.S. Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, according to ABC News, to investigate the troubling cluster suicides in Palo Alto. Hopefully their findings will lead to some answers and possible solutions.

As a parent of a child who will be heading to high school in a few short years, I was saddened to learn in this Psychology Today post that the average high school kid today has the same level of anxiety as the average psychiatric patient in the early 1950s. Yet it is comforting to know that children who experience secure attachment grow into more well-adjusted adults with less anxiety and better mental health. Meeting children’s emotional needs enables the building of a strong bond and trust between the parent and the child — a beneficial ingredient during the vulnerable years of adolescence.

Mental health and suicide are multifaceted issues that can be attributed to various factors. It’s a complex puzzle. Unreasonable academic pressures may be one piece of the puzzle, as Rosin pointed out in her article — and it is one that can be easily replaced.

We need to ask ourselves and examine candidly:

Should our children’s self-worth be tied to academic achievements?
Are our kids showing signs of being victims of physical or online bullying? Due fear 70% of teens hide online behavior from parents
Aren’t success and happiness — along with health, of course — essentially what parents want and wish for their kids?
Are we on the right path in our efforts to cultivate success and happiness in our children?
How can we support our children in order to create a more compassionate world?

Editor’s pick: A kindness movement inspired by a potato

Looking back on the last decade since becoming a parent, I can see how Attachment Parenting International (API) values — trust, empathy, kindness, joy, compassion, peace — have shaped both my personal life and my professional career.

The choices I make have stemmed from these values. Once my first baby was born, I chose to work primarily from home, despite the smaller paycheck, so that I could provide consistent and loving care. Through the years, my career has transformed into one where I only work for organizations with the same values as espoused by API, because those are the values that I want to direct my life and that which I am striving to pass down to my children.

Recently, I read a Forbes interview with Daniel Lubetzky, founder and CEO of the 먹튀검증업체, in which he shared how his overarching value — kindness — has not only inspired his personal worldview but also a professional career of starting companies that embrace this worldview:

“Some people think I am some sort of special human being who is unusually kind. But this isn’t true at all. We all have this capacity, it’s just that we’re governed by the systems and structures in which we live and work, and by incentives and culture.”

What governs Daniel is his father’s stories. His dad was a Holocaust survivor. He was 9 years old when World War II began and wasn’t liberated from the Dachau concentration camp until he was 15. Daniel’s dad saw many horrors, but he also witnessed amazing kindness. One story that Daniel heard many times, that really had an impact on the direction of his life, was about a German soldier who would regularly throw a potato at his father’s feet. As Daniel shared in the Forbes interview:

“This small act was a kind of lifeblood, because it highlighted a common humanity and hope even in the bleakest circumstances.”

Daniel’s father raised his son with a deep appreciation of the values of kindness, compassion and hope wrapped in a parenting approach of unconditional love and support. Daniel, in turn, has lived out his life guided by those values, both personally and professionally.

When he was 26, Daniel founded PeaceWorks, a food company with the vision of bringing together Israelis, Arabs, Turks and others in conflict regions to make and sell products from the Middle East.

Daniel went on to found 3 more companies, and probably the best known of them all is KIND. I love their snack bars!

The whole cultural foundation of KIND is kindness, but its not at all a marketing ploy, as Daniel shared in the Forbes interview:

“A lot of people see what we’re doing as antithetical to business and the competitive environment. For me, empathy is an existential question – it’s about the survival of the human race.”

Moreover, Daniel has found empathy and kindness to be imperative to doing business. By understanding the motives of other people, especially during conflict, Daniel is able to reach a peaceful resolution and more productive place quicker — not to mention, that acts of kindness makes you happier.

Daniel and his KIND team make kindness the overarching theme of the workplace, also. Staff members regularly recognize one another, their friends or even strangers for their acts of kindness though email, snack giveaways, supporting various social causes, and cards to pass on to someone else.

His ultimate goal is to create a movement of balancing profit with social benefit, using KIND as a platform. But Daniel recognizes the danger of inadvertently commercializing kindness. We’ve all seen this before, such as when companies began using the word “natural” on their labels when their products weren’t truly what we, as consumers, define as natural. Daniel feels that it comes down to companies intentionally keeping kindness authentic, and that consumers can help keep companies accountable because we instinctively know the difference.

Daniel, and KIND, are continually seeking balance between being a profitable business and a movement leader, where both can reinforce one another without exploiting the other. For a business to be truly successful, it has to be able to be both economically sustainable and socially impactful. Otherwise, going back to Daniel’s view of empathy being existential, what’s the point for humanity?

**Potato photo source: FreeImages.com/Pascal Thauvin

**Stick figure photo source: FreeImages.com/John Evans

Editor’s pick: A moment of silence for the “mother” of doula work

I hired a doula for my third child’s birth. After an early preterm birth with my first and a medically necessary Cesarean with my second, my third baby was on track to be my first, and only, normal childbirth experience. I was pulling out all the stops, too — aiming for an unmedicated labor and a VBAC (vaginal birth after Cesarean). I knew in my heart of hearts that having a doula was the best chance I had to reach my goals, what with the Cesarean surgical team waiting outside my hospital room’s doors “just in case,” as the VBAC agreement with the hospital read.

When it comes to pregnancy nutrition, mothers-to-be should consider supplementing with whole food vitamins. These types of vitamins are extracted from natural sources rather than chemically engineered, and the result is better pregnancy nutrition before conception, during fetal development and after childbirth.

Why Do Expectant Mothers Need Vitamin Supplements for Pregnancy Nutrition?

The human body is an amazing machine with a remarkable ability to get what it needs from the resources offered by nature. By eating a healthy diet, we are able to extract the necessary balance of vitamins, minerals, fats, and energy sources needed to keep our bodies running the way they were intended to work. Pregnancy nutrition requires us to be even more vigilant in getting the nutrients required so that the fetus is able to develop into a physically and mentally healthy baby.

The unfortunate truth is that many of us don’t eat a properly balanced diet any more, and the need for specialized pregnancy nutrition makes this even more evident. There are numerous factors that play into this change in the way we eat, including the availability, convenience, and low cost of processed foods. Adding supplements like whole food vitamins allows us access to regain some of those essential compounds that are missing from the processed foods we eat on a daily basis.

Why Are Whole Food Vitamins Better?

Whole food vitamins utilize sources found in nature, rather than synthesized compounds. The advantage, whether as a part of pregnancy nutrition or not, is that they are more easily absorbed and utilized by the human body. Most of us know that the best places to find health-sustaining nutrients is through a diet that includes fresh fruits and vegetables, for example, but few of us actually get enough of these foods in our day-to-day regimens. Whole food vitamins are extracted from these fruits and vegetables, as well as a variety of other naturally occurring sources. Because the body recognize these compounds-as opposed to synthetic or isolated vitamins-it knows how to put them to use. In the case of vitamins that have been isolated from their whole food sources or even created in the lab, as much as 90% of them pass directly through our bodies with no actual benefit.

A pregnancy nutrition plan usually includes a need for extra vitamins. It is nearly unreasonable to add these healthy components to a diet only to extract 10% of the actual benefits. Instead, making whole food vitamins a part of an overall pregnancy nutrition regimen helps ensure that the nutrients are actually being absorbed and used for the health of both the baby and the mother.

Where Do Whole Food Vitamins Come From?

The whole food vitamins and Sunergetic Products used for pregnancy nutrition come from a variety of natural sources. Some are extracted from beets, alfalfa, and bee pollen, for example. Rather than simply isolating these nutrients, they remain attached to their whole food ingredients to allow the body to recognize and readily utilize them. Other sources range from herbs like parsley and to less obvious candidates like fossilized coral. Coral provides the calcium that is such an important part of pregnancy nutrition.

Because the whole food vitamins recommended for pregnancy nutrition also include live enzymes, they allow even greater access by the body. These enzymes help to break down the nutrients, which include antioxidants, in order to be absorbed by the cells that use them for proper functioning. By processing the whole food vitamins at low temperatures, manufacturers are able to preserve these live enzymes and create the most powerful supplements that science and nature can team up to make.

My doula made all the difference. Not only did I reach my birthing goals, but I also got to hold the only one of my 3 babies for the first time after birth. He was delivered and placed immediately upon my chest, and I was finally able to call the shots with one of my newborns, such as when he would be removed for weighing and bathing. I had no say with either of my first two babies, and I credit my doula for giving back control of my birth experience to me.

Dana, 90, passed away Feb. 2 at her home in Fairfield, Connecticut, USA. She was a medical anthropologist who studied under cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead. The women cofounded the Human Lactation Center in Westport, Connecticut, USA, in the 1970s.

Dana was more than a student, being among the first scientists to challenge formula companies on the link among formula use and high infant mortality in developing countries. She went on to successfully pressure formula companies to educate women in third-world countries that formula should be used as a supplement to, not a replacement of, breastfeeding.

Dana also promoted breastfeeding here at home in the United States, seeking a way to restore the intuitive breastfeeding support lost to mothers of her generation. She summed it up well in an interview with The New York Times Magazine in 1970:

“When Grandmother walked out of the nursery and took up painting and golf, out with her went the whole cultural tradition of pampering mother along with baby. No one is there to tell her how to hold the nursing infant, how long to keep him suckling or how to care for uncomfortably full breasts or irritated nipples. We prefer to leave the responsibility to medical authorities, usually males who are uninformed about the nonmedical aspects of breastfeeding.”

Perhaps her most pivotal contribution to breastfeeding support came in 1969 when her research gave her the idea of the “doula” — a term that Dana is credited with coining and which is derived from the Greek word for “female servant.” From then on, Dana advocated for the use of doulas to guide mothers during and after childbirth with the goal of more successful breastfeeding.

So it is because of Dana’s efforts half a continent away, 40 years before, that my doula was able to give me a truly healing and transformative birth experience — not to mention, doulas around the world now doing the same for countless other women, giving them and their babies the best start in bonding and breastfeeding and a secure attachment relationship.

We all owe Dana Raphael a moment of gratitude for helping to change the landscape of childbirth and breastfeeding support and continue to push the Attachment Parenting movement forward to where it is today.

**Photo source: Free Images.com/agastecheg

Editor’s pick: Breastfeeding in jail

I took a breastfeeding support call a few years ago from a woman who was spending a week in a county jail but wasn’t being allowed to use her breast pump. The situation didn’t end well. The jail never budged on its policies, and the woman lost her milk supply, but not before dealing with excruciating engorgement.

On an immediate note, this was a hard situation. But when looking at it from the perspective of breastfeeding as an intervention in a new mother’s life, this was doubly heart-breaking.

I hope that mother was able to turn her life around, but it would’ve been much easier if the prison system had a more thorough understanding of attachment and the potential that becoming a new mother — especially when breastfeeding — has in changing the trajectory of an at-risk mother’s life, not to mention her baby’s life. Wellness writer Meryn Callander explains this phenomenon in her book, Why Dads Leave.

I’m excited to see at least one county jail changing its policies in breastfeeding and mother-baby time among inmates.

“It’s in the interest of everybody to really assist a woman in that situation to rebuild her life and create a healthy home for her child,” Diana Claitor, director of the Texas Jail Project, told the Texas Observer in this week’s Editor’s pick, “Bonding Behind Bars” by health writer Alexis Garcia-Ditta.

In this article, we learn about the Travis County Jail in Texas, USA — one of just 4 county jails in the United States that allows breastfeeding on-site.

Now, to be honest, this still not ideal. The jail only allows moms to breastfeed their newborns up to 2 times a day, 4 days a week. The article doesn’t mention anything about pumping, which I’m hoping is just an oversight, because how else are these moms supposed to keep up their milk supply beyond a few days?

But if a mother is able to keep up her milk supply, and her baby is willing to latch even when only offered the opportunity sporadically at best, those women are rewarded with private time with their babies for a couple hours each time.

This is a huge step — though it’s still not enough. These moms need to have constant access to their babies, not only to be able to breastfeed successfully but also to actually be able to use new motherhood as a turning-around point in their lives. The article is a bit lax on the risks of separating mothers and their children, really downplaying the attachment component.

But it is a step in the right direction, at least.

*Photo from Free Images.com/Cyan Li

Editor’s pick: The 4 parenting styles — and where Attachment Parenting fits in

This week’s pick is an infographic from Mom Junction.

Sometimes parents will refer to Attachment Parenting as a parenting “style.” To be accurate, though, Attachment Parenting International refers to Attachment Parenting as a parenting approach. You may be wondering what the difference is.

It comes down to the scientific definition. Researchers identify 4 parenting styles — broad categories under which are various approaches, or ways of relating to our children. Attachment Parenting is a specific approach that falls under the broader Authoritative parenting style. Read about the 4 parenting styles in this The Attached Family article.

There is some discussion about whether the Authoritative parenting style gives justice in categorizing Attachment Parenting. In question specifically is the non-punishment aspect of positive discipline. Often, other approaches that fall under Authoritative parenting may include logical consequences or other forms of discipline that have a punishment element. Judy Arnall, author of Parenting With Patience, proposes the addition of a 5th parenting style — Collaborative — in this The Attached Family article.

For now, with the current 4 established parenting styles, Attachment Parenting most closely identifies with the Authoritative parenting style, particularly regarding child outcomes.

*Courtesy of: MomJunction