APtly Said – Page 156 – Parenting with Attachment in Mind

Discipline as Play

Like many families with small children we have come to possess rather a lot of sidewalk chalk. You buy some for the kids and a grandparent buys some for the kids and then a friend thinks your kids would like chalk, and pretty soon you have tons. And the chalk is so huge it just lasts forever and ever and ever.

Hannah ‘painting’ with her foot on the garage door

Sidewalk chalk has a way of getting everywhere. My own child’s ‘finger friends‘ love to use chalk on the side of the house, in particular. And that stuff doesn’t wash away, since the overhang prevents water from ever coming into contact with it. So the side of my house has been decorated for like 2 years because in spite of my plans to clean it I just never get around to it.

Hannah posing with her art work

Recently, the finger friends struck again. I was in the back yard and I noticed some letters on the side of our house. They said ‘HAN’, and then whoever was writing it ran out of room. So I asked my daughter HANnah about it, and she blamed her one-year-old brother. I pointed out that it was her name. She said, “Oh yes, it was the finger friends. They’re so sneaky!” I was frustrated, because I have spent the last 2 years discussing the appropriate use of sidewalk chalk. I decided that Hannah should wash it off. In fact, she should wash off every decoration she’d added to our house, ever. Because I didn’t want to, and maybe that would make her think first next time. Hmph.
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Growing Attached Through the Years – AP Month 2009

In October 2008, API celebrated the first annual Attachment Parenting Month (AP Month). We are already gearing up for AP Month 2009 and this year’s theme is “Growing Attached Through the Years.”

How does your family grow? With bicycle bells and hairstyling gels and jam-packed days all in a row? Tell us and join us in celebrating our second annual Attachment Parenting Month!

This year we recognize, appreciate and celebrate the long-term and multiple gifts of growth parents experience with children each day over a lifetime.

It’s easy to participate in AP Month! The whole family is encouraged to enter one or more of our featured contests to demonstrate our theme of growth. Entries are accepted now through September 30 and we’ll post our top picks for public voting during October.

About AP Month 2009 – Growing Attached Through the Years

Attachment Parenting International (API), along with the Sears family and other prominent AP supporters, will celebrate the second annual Attachment Parenting (AP) Month in October.

This year’s theme “Growing Attached Through the Years” reminds us that building healthy, secure attachments between parents and children is a dynamic process that continues through childhood and does not end in infancy.

Join the celebration! AP Month Central shows you how!

AP Month Goals

1. Unifying the AP community in celebration.
2. Supporting all parents by building their confidence and raising awareness.
3. Promoting positive, strength-based, healthy parenting as advocated by API and other AP Month sponsors.

Mellow Monday?

This past May, I instituted Stay at Home Mondays at our house as a way of easing into the work week and my husband being gone after the weekend. We’ve been missing them lately. We went on a trip, then my husband was out of town, then I got a kidney infection. These were my particular circumstances, but I’m sure you could make your own list of reasons why your schedule doesn’t stay on track

This past Sunday night I lay in bed thinking about getting to have a dedicated Monday at home for the first time in about six weeks. Then “Manic Monday” by The Bangles started running through my head:
“It’s just another manic Monday
I wish it was Sunday
‘Cause that’s my fun day
My I don’t have to run day
It’s just another manic Monday”

Each day I try to decide if it’s a fun day, run day, or if we can somehow combine the errands and play, the housework and time to just hang out with each other. Thankfully, staying at home on Mondays erases most of the questions about what we’re going to do. If I have any household to do lists, I put them away on Mondays. We aren’t available for checking off tasks. So I went to sleep thinking about how peaceful Monday would be, even going so far as to consider mellow Mondays a great substitute.

My Monday was not mellow. Giving a nearly-three year old attention all day long and just following his lead makes for a lot of activity. First, he lay on my chest facing up so we could both raise our arms and legs in the air and wiggle them. Then we hid under the sheet and I’d ask, “Where did Mama and Cavanaugh go?” to which Cavanaugh would respond by saying, “I don’t know. Where is them?” Next the under-sheet turned into a rocket ship so we could fly back to New Mexico.

Muffin I mentioned the possibility of baking something at some point in the day. “Let’s bake something now” was Cavanaugh’s response, followed up by pushing his Kitchen Helper over to the table and instructing, “You get the ingrements,” then, “You get cups and spoons,” and “Where’s the brown fleura?”

After guessing brown sugar and baking powder, I scored with “Vanilla?”

By the end of our pumpkin muffin mixing, Cavanaugh was leaning over the table pointing to indicate which muffin cup to fill up next. “Them need pumpkin in them. They feel very sad. Give them some nice pumpkin and them feel happy.”

After breakfast, we pulled out the supply of glue art materials: pom poms, beads, metal confetti shapes, googly eyes, glitter, a popsicle stick for spreading glue, glue, and construction paper. We did that for two hours, interrupted by Cavanaugh needing to poop, which he did on his potty as I read Not a Box (one of my favorite toddler books because it encourages pretend play and turns cardboard boxes into robot costumes, race cars, and elephants to ride). After more muffins and three times of Not a Box, Cavanaugh had successfully pooped and gotten red glitter on his penis. Of course, that was a fine accompaniment to the green glitter on his arms and gold on his chin and cheeks. Glue Art

In his room, we measured his height on the growth chart and hung up a memory board I’d made over the weekend. We put pictures of Cavanaugh’s cousins and grandparents on there and went to look on my computer for more photos. He had an hour of quiet time that he narrated as he did puzzles and hid under the sheet. Then we looked on the computer for more photos to a Jellydots soundtrack. That was all before three in the afternoon.

So my Monday was neither mellow nor manic. Instead, I got to hang out with my kid all day, play pretend, make art and food, laugh, and watch my son turn like a dog chasing his tail as he tried to see the design on the bottom of his brand-new big boy underwear. This may have been one of the best Mondays of my lifetime.

What happens in your house when you put the to do lists away and just follow your kid’s lead?

Sonya Fehér love love loves glitter and blogs at http://mamatrue.com.

Looking forward to the API 15th Anniversary Gathering

So, the big event is coming up quickly…Attachment Parenting International’s 15th Anniversary Gathering in Nashville, Tennessee, USA. I’m very much looking forward to it, although it’ll be my first trip anywhere without my husband and kids. Known for my uncanny ability to get lost in the remotest of places – I have on more than one occasion called up my husband in a panic as I was driving around the barren countryside of Nebraska in search of a town of less than 60 people to interview one for a local newspaper article – I am more than a little nervous about trying to navigate a city as large as Nashville.

Despite these concerns, the weekend holds a lot more promise. I get to hear from experts on Attachment Parenting and parenting in general during an afternoon think-tank discussion. I get to listen to performances by country music artist Vince Gill and song writers Gary Nicholson and Mary Nielsen Chapman and their children during an evening event. I get to listen to kids music artist Roger Day. I get to meet other AP parents and their families, including API Co-founders Barbara Nicholson and Lysa Parker. I get to meet other API leaders, and I am super excited to meet some of the API staff members who I have only known so far through phone calls and e-mail messages!
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Thank you, Pam Leo!

Parent educator Pam Leo’s book, Connection Parenting, was the first Attachment Parenting book I ever picked up and it helped to change the course of my parenting journey – just as this book has influenced the thousands of parents before me, and after me, who flipped through its pages.

Connection Parenting brings together all the knowledge and experience of a woman who not only promoted attachment-promoting interactions between parents and children in her community but who saw success in her own home…not unlike so many attached parents who share their stories on API Speaks, in The Attached Family, and on the API Forum. What makes Connection Parenting stand out is how easy the concepts in the book could be taken off the pages and put to practice in real life, particularly for those parents who grew up in a home where punishments, such as spanking, were used. Many of us know how difficult the transition can be when going from a punishing mindset to one of true discipline, communication, and loving parenting.
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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.

Impulse Control; How to Gently Encourage Your Child to Develop It!

Everybody has heard the adage “When we know better, we do better,” and everybody also knows it’s not always true. We as parents are not perfect. While we know and understand that corporal punishment is wrong, even parents who subscribe to this belief slip into this behaviour sometimes. In life we all make decisions to do something that we know isn’t the right one. We eat the chocolate cake we know is detrimental to our diet goals, we drink the soda pop with aspartame although we know the chemical content isn’t healthy to our bodies, we know better but we don’t always do better. And we console ourselves that we’re being moderate and that it’s alright to occasionally indulge ourselves in our impulses.

Somehow though, we expect our children to have a higher level of impulse control than we as adults have. Children, like adults, have a full range of impulse control development. Some children are born sensible, with sober second thought a part of their nature. Other children fall on the other end of that spectrum where thought and action are almost simultaneous! Most children fall somewhere along the spectrum and have occasional bounces to the other end. I was shocked when my normally extremely sensible 6 year old cut her three year old sister’s bangs. I was even more surprised when my normally highly impulsive 3 year old stopped suddenly at the edge of the sidewalk before I had the opportunity to stop her and looked three times up and down the road to see if there was traffic and then looked back at me to ask if it was safe!

What is normal behaviour? How do we curb impulsiveness that is destructive, dangerous or out of control? What do we as parents do to protect our property and others from our children’s normal impulses? What do you do if your child does something that is extreme when you know they should know better?
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Parenting in Public

When I was expecting my first child I committed to attachment parenting. I wanted to meet my child’s needs in the way that felt right to me. The past four and a half years with my daughter Hannah and then my son Jacob have confirmed my commitment to my principles. I believe it has strengthened our relationship and helped my kids to feel safe and nurtured. I’m satisfied with my parenting approach.

I will admit, however, that there are certain situations where my resolve is tested. Almost invariably, those situations arise in public settings. It is in public where I can feel the judgment of strangers and the disapproving glances. It is in public that my kids seem to become tense and unruly. It is in public where I feel a heightened fear for my child’s safety as we deal with parking lots and crowded shopping centers. It is as if all of my parenting buttons are pressed when we’re out in the view of others.

I have found myself heavily pregnant, running after my 3-year-old as she bolted away from me in a busy parking lot, and it was not a good time. I have stood beside a screaming toddler or bounced a crying baby in the bank line-up and felt all eyes on me. I have nursed my 2-year-old in the mall food court and felt concerned about what other people would think. As much as I am committed to attachment parenting, I admit that some part of me does care about the opinions of others. I’m not terribly proud of it, but it’s the truth.

So, how have I handled my fears? How have I let go of my need for approval, my desire to please, so that I can get on with the business of parenting?

A few things have helped me with public parenting. I’ve reminded myself that I will never see these people again, especially in situations where that is the truth. I’ve allowed myself to accept help when it is offered, whether that means holding my things while I run after my child or helping me get my groceries to the car. I have found like-minded mothers who provide me with support and insight. And I’ve gained more parenting experience with each passing day, which has increased my own confidence.

The thing that has helped me most of all, though, is viewing my public actions as my own contribution towards establishing a positive parenting culture. You never know who will be see when you’re out in public, and the positive effect it might have. Breastfeeding your toddler, wearing your baby, or handling your two-year-old’s outburst gently may set an example for someone else. It may bolster another parent’s own confidence or resolve or help someone to consider something they hadn’t before. And along the way, the world just may become a more welcoming place for all children and parents.

You can catch up with Amber’s regular musings on life and parenting on her blog at Strocel.com.