attachment parenting – Page 9

Mindfully balancing freedom and boundaries to nurture our children

If you asked me in my teens and early 20s what it was I desired most, I would probably have told you it’s this easygoing feeling of freedom, of lightheartedness, of non-restrictedness. Freedom to go wherever I want to, to move around freely, to do, say, think, and feel whatever I want to… I never liked being told what to do.

Rules? Boundaries? Structure? The less, the better — so I thought…

Fast-forward a little over a decade: I am a mom of an 8-year-old girl. I am a child psychologist. I am a mindfulness teacher. I am a Strala Yoga guide and so much more — and all of these parts of my life have taught me a lesson or two about freedom.

When I became a mom, I naturally wished for my daughter to experience this feeling of freedom herself — freedom of choice, freedom to develop her own sense of self, her own will, her own talents, her own style of doing things, from the smallest to the biggest thing, one of the first things I struggled beside the breastfeeding was the going back to work and feeling like I left him, But for that time I got him his favorite stuffed toy, which he still carries with him, it gives children security and comfort.

And so far, I believe things are going pretty well most of the time.

However, of course, there were and will always be bumps in the road, and challenges — big and small. Alongside my growing daughter, I have learned how the need for and the experience of freedom changes over the course of a child’s development. I also grew to understand how healthy, mindful boundaries can be helpful — not merely limiting — in setting up this framework of a safe space, which in turn encourages and enables the growing child to experience, explore, and enjoy his or her freedom.

Here are 2 reflections on freedom and boundaries, and how to mindfully approach these in a way that conforms to your child’s and your own unique needs as they present themselves in this very moment:

1) Kids need healthy, age-appropriate boundaries in order to be able to experience a sense of freedom and develop their own sense of self, including their own will.

Ever stood in front of an open closet stuffed to the brim with kids’ clothes of all colors and styles, asking your toddler what she wants to wear today? Yup. I know. I have. It’s mayhem — stress for the mom and stress for the toddler. However, telling that same toddler that she will have to wear exactly xyz today might result in a big tantrum. Why? Because said toddler finds herself going through an important developmental phase where she is experiencing and developing a sense of self, including her own will.

What’s a mindful way to go that caters to your child’s wish for some freedom of choice, her developmental stage, and your wish for giving your child space and freedom while at the same time preserving your sanity?

This might look like laying out two weather-appropriate outfits for your toddler — without even giving her a glimpse of that fully equipped closet filled with those gazillion choices — and asking her which one she prefers to wear today. Consequence: A happy, proud toddler who got to make her own choice — and a happy mom, with a content toddler fully dressed within minutes.

2) What these boundaries look like will change from moment to moment and over time.

Your teenager will not be as content as said toddler if you lay out two outfits for school in the morning and ask her to choose one. The same applies for other choices and rules like how long my child is allowed to play outside in the evenings, when is a suitable bedtime, how far from home my child is allowed to go, when she can play with her peers, and so on.

As parents, we are constantly challenged to find and establish a framework of healthy boundaries and rules for our family. Ideally, this would involve allowing all members of our family to experience a sense of individual freedom and self-efficacy while also experiencing the equally important sense of belonging to our loved ones — especially our immediate family — and the comforting feeling of being held and contained within this safe structure.

Being mindful and ever curious about our children’s needs and their individual development, being well-informed about children’s developmental stages, and being aware of our own reactions to these needs will help us figure out how to navigate — moment by moment — as we move through this wonderful, exciting lifelong parenting journey.

13 Attachment Parenting hacks

Attachment Parenting is more than a tick-boxed scorecard of babywearing and breastfeeding. It is so very much more.

Attachment Parenting, for many of us, is a way of life. In its simplest of forms, it’s about choosing connection and respect over convenience and quick-wins.

The following advice has been lifted — with permission! — from one of my favorite virtual parent support groups. The points summarize 13 Attachment Parenting hacks from real — albeit virtual — moms that might just revolutionize the way you think about parenting:

“Pause before reacting to anything. The very few genuine emergencies that require instant reactions will get them before you can even think.” (Linda)
“When a kid is upset, don’t try to make them feel better. Just try to make it clear that you get why they are upset.” (Nina)
“Sing and play! Everything is still fairly new and exciting to a child. Let them join in what you’re doing, and join in what they’re doing.” (Jenna)
“A baby is its own instruction manual.” (Lisa)
“Not all kids can cope with choices.” (Linda)
“Laughing together with a child is a powerful way of connecting and a healing tool for both of you.” (Rosetta)
“When in doubt, err on the side of love.” (Marina)
“Asking a question and giving a child the power to answer and be heard, is an amazing thing.” (Lily)
“Put a crabby baby into water…let the splashing commence!” (Michelle)
“Make your home a ‘yes’ environment.” (Claire)
“Piggy back rides!” (Katie)
“If you can give your children a chance to have control over something, do it.” (Tia)
“Never regard your relationship with your kids as a rivalry (them vs. me). It’s ALWAYS a partnership.” (Bonnie)

Thank you to each of the moms who offered their wisdom.

Have guilt? Find your parenting anchor point

Guilt seems to be inherent in parenting. It doesn’t really matter how you parent, it’s so tempting to compare ourselves to others and how they are relating to and raising up their children.

As a working mother in a conservative area, I feel this tug of parenting guilt from time to time. A common scenario in the small, farming community where my family lives is for a mother to stay at home with her children when they are young and then get a job at the school when her youngest child enters kindergarten. It sounds like a great gig!

But that is not my choice. I did work, both from home and outside the home some days, when my children were small and continue to work year-round now that my children are in school. I love what I do and feel that I make a meaningful impact through my career. I know my stay-at-home friends don’t mean to, but sometimes I hear — whether real or perceived — overtones that what’s best for children in general is for the mother to stay at home full time, without a paycheck-yielding job.

I suspect my guilty feelings are largely perceived than actual. I trust that even if other mothers don’t agree with my career-oriented lifestyle, that they are mature enough to allow me the freedom to parent my way. Unfortunately, like all of us, I am sometimes the target of others wanting to pressure me into their way of looking at the world.

I am a stalwart proponent of informed choice. While I do believe that every child deserves to be raised in a home with secure, healthy family attachments, I know that my own “brand” of attachment parenting is not the “be all, end all.” We, all of us parents, make the best decisions at any one time with the knowledge, support, and resources we have available. Every family is unique, and even among families with the same values and goals, mannerisms and lifestyle will vary — because just as every individual is different, so is every family.

All children, all parents, all families — everyone deserves healthy, secure attachment bonds within their social groups. For parent-child relationships, API’s Eight Principles of Parenting provide 8 areas of family life, with a variety of ideas within each, as to how to form and strengthen attachment bonds within families. But that doesn’t mean we all do things the same way.

Like with nurturing touch, I didn’t do much babywearing but holding my baby and cuddling with my children is definitely my thing! Or with childbirth, I had an epidural, a cesarean, and a VBAC, and while my unmedicated birth experience definitely made it easier to bond with my newborn, the high-intervention births didn’t hinder what has turned out to be a very secure attachment with those children. I also have experience with both breastfeeding and bottle-nursing, cosleeping and crib use, and all kinds of childcare situations.

Parenting, like everything else, has different seasons. We have to change, almost constantly sometimes, it seems, to keep up with our growing infants and children — in how to match their development with our guidance and passing down of our family values, as well as renew techniques of maintaining warm, sensitive, and appropriate ways of interacting with, relating to, and staying attached with our ever-changing little ones as they mature into adolescents and finally fledged on their own.

We are all on our own parenting journeys of exactly how we will do this in our individual family. But like all parents, since probably the beginning of history — since we are all unique and so are our children and our partners — are also learning “on the job.” There are no handbooks that apply to every situation.

My home library is full of books on family relationship theory, research, and advice. Yet, my personal approach to parenting is a mix that goes well beyond the bits and pieces of these books that I found helpful — among the bits and pieces that I feel don’t apply to my family but certainly they may apply to another family — and include bits and pieces of how I was raised, the lessons learned reflecting on years of parenting already behind me, thoughts from friends and family members, my instincts, the reality of unavoidable challenges, scientific studies, blogs and websites, parenting classes and support groups, teleseminars, conferences, and so much more.

We are all doing this: gathering information from the world within and around us to figure out the best way of parenting our children and nurturing our families. Because its learning-as-we-go, there are ample opportunities for doubt to creep in. When we are stumped by our child’s behavior, especially if we are trying something new — such as breastfeeding our baby rather than resort to formula — it’s easy to think that maybe we’re doing something wrong or not good enough.

Unresolved doubt can grow into guilt. “What if…?” may fill our heads, as we compare ourselves and our children and our families to others, when those other families are likely doing the same kind of comparison maybe even to yours.

I’d like to get away from the thought that guilt is somehow unnatural and shouldn’t be felt. There are whole books written on the topic of “mothering guilt,” and there is a lot of blame being thrown around toward specific parenting approaches. But guilt is a natural human emotion, something that comes out of normal social interaction. As social beings, we will naturally feel guilt if we engage in a behavior that we perceive to have compromised our own standards.

Guilt can be helpful in that it motivates us to do better — though if unchecked, guilt can definitely be unhealthy and lead to anxiety conditions. The absence of guilt in a person, however, can be just as unhealthy: A lack of this emotion is implicated in individuals with a high degree of psychopathy.

Regardless, guilt is an uncomfortable feeling and one that no one wants to be immersed in for long. Being emotionally uncomfortable, such as with guilt, can keep us from being free to parent how we want to, bogging us down into doubt and even despair, and preventing us from the joy we seek in our parent-child relationships.

The idea that certain parenting approaches create more guilt in parents than others is, I believe, unfounded. Rather, from what I have found in my experience of providing parent support in a variety of settings for more than a decade is that what creates guilt is fear — namely, fear for their child’s well-being. I have seen this in many parents, no matter their child-rearing approach — attachment parenting or no — and most often in new parents or in parents trying something new that they hope will create better results but, they realize, stepping out from the familiar carries risk and with that risk comes fear. So where does fear come from? From what I find, it’s often a lack of parent support.

Regardless of what child-rearing approach parents choose, its incredibly — crucially — important that they find support. API offers both online and local, in-person support through a variety of resources, though research finds that the most valuable support for parents is through in-person support groups — of which API has across the United States and around the world.

It’s so important to find like-minded parents who can offer their “been there, done that” stories, emotional scaffolding, and specific suggestions for when you feel confused as to what to do about your child’s behavior, or when you question whether this new thing you’re trying, like positive discipline instead of spanking, for example, is going to work out in the long term, or how exactly to keep those family attachment bonds strong as your children grow, or how to move forward when your family encounters challenging life circumstances.

Attempting to find support among parents who do not share the same approach to child-raising is like comparing apples to oranges, and the advice you receive is likely to deepen the sense of doubt being felt, and therefore create guilt — not to mention conflict with your personal values system, which creates its own set of uncomfortable emotions.

All parents want to feel validated in their decisions, and even if they do not intentionally seek out support, unsolicited advice will come their way — from family, friends, pediatricians, teachers, strangers, and others. But without having that anchor in a group of like-minded parents to act as your sounding board, to help guide you to make parenting choices that are in line with your values, you may find yourself swaying with the advice like a bottle cork in the ocean tide.

It’s very difficult to get grounded in your self-confidence as a parent without an anchor point. I cannot overemphasize the value of parent support.

Speaking peace

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on 2/9/2015. Written by Lysa Parker & Barbara Nicholson, API cofounders and coauthors of Attached at the Heart — this article captures the essence of Attachment Parenting, and this year’s AP Month 2016 theme, “Nurturing Peace: Parenting for World Harmony.”

We often reflect on whether or not API has made a difference in our efforts toward peace. API isn’t about promoting just parenting strategies: We have a broader long-term vision we have often described as “peaceful parenting for a peaceful world.”

We are living in a time in history that is both grave and great.

I heard a commentator say once that “stumbling into peace is better than rushing to war.” That is not a strategic plan for peace, and we know that governments and nations are less likely to make that a priority. It is the citizens, each and every one of us, who will create lasting change.

We know that, like punishment, war provides temporary results. So, as our world goes through its painful transformations, we continue to do the work of peace each and every day in our homes. We tend to want to have a quick fix, but the most lasting and effective peace will take generations.

Those of us involved with API do so because we want to be a part of something bigger than ourselves and to have an anchor in our own lives to help us transform, to undo our own negative internal programming, to learn to live — and speak — peacefully.

In a real sense, we are pioneers in creating a new paradigm in parenting and living.

It isn’t easy, and as we learn, we will make mistakes. But from those mistakes come wisdom. We can’t let our mistakes immobilize us, but let us look at those times as opportunities to understand ourselves. Our support group community provides us with a net of safety to share, to be validated and supported.

API Support Groups are a foundational community for practicing peace, with our children and each other. These communities provide the opportunity to practice and engage in the language of peace: Nonviolent Communication (NVC).

This language style has and continues to teach me so much. I wish I had known about NVC when my children were small. Still NVC benefits me as an adult, both in talking to my grown children and other adults. NVC creator Marshall Rosenberg gave all of us a gift of skills that teaches us to:

See the need behind the behavior
Give us the vocabulary for our feelings and needs
Teaches us to use “power with” rather than “power over” our children
See each other’s humanness at the need level
Move away from punishments
Bring about peaceful change that begins with working on our own mindsets

Gordon Neufeld of the Neufeld Institute and Gabor Mate have also made major contributions to our understanding and skills to parent peacefully. They have taught us to look past our child’s behavior to find the unmet needs and strengthen parent-child connections.

That’s a radical departure from our culture where we feel we have to punish for every misdeed.

What we say and how we say it can make the difference between building relationships or breaking them down. We have to learn this new language of peace to accompany our actions toward peace, beginning in our own families. It is the essential component toward creating a peaceful world.

Babywearing and peace

API is excited to support International Babywearing Week 2016, Oct. 5-10. API provides a wide array of resources on babywearing — from benefits to how-to’s and safety.

Babywearing — as well as carrying your baby — meets a baby’s needs for physical contact, affection, security, stimulation, and movement while on the go. Each of these needs for baby is important for encouraging healthy neurological development.

Happier babies do tend to make more peaceful homes, but babywearing has a deeper connection to peace: Through meeting baby’s needs intuitively through tools like babywearing, we are establishing a relationship based on mutual respect. We are meeting baby’s needs proactively, and baby learns how to respect others by experiencing it first. And baby learns to meet others’ needs proactively by experiencing it first. It’s part of teaching the healthy emotional relationship dynamic of give and take, peacefully.

You can also use matching gear clothing for family portraits and special occasions, very comfortable for your baby and he or she can match your family too!

Carrying baby, and keeping her close, teaches the same. But one of the best benefits of babywearing to the parent is that it intensely, intentionally cares for baby and is hands-free, as military mom Kit Jenkins has shared on The Attached Family:

“Babywearing made it possible to do household chores.”

Sometimes, well-meaning friends or family have the opinion that babywearing impedes baby’s development by reducing tummy time. I have heard so-called adages of He’ll never learn to walk if you don’t put him down and Babies have to have tummy time. Actually, the position that baby is in the sling — or when carried in arms — directly helps baby develop her core muscles in the same way that tummy time does, as Dr. Maria Blois, MD, explains on The Attached Family:

“Carrying baby enhances motor skills by stimulating the vestibular system, used for balance. Holding baby while moving counts as tummy time.”

On a side note, babywearing can also help Mom get back in shape after pregnancy. I remember having terrible back aches in the early postpartum as my body adjusted to not carrying around a baby bump anymore. Babywearing and carrying my babies helped strengthen those muscles again. And later on, as baby grows, babywearing and carrying continues to provide the benefit of strength-building, as babywearing educator Giselle shared on APtly Said:

“Going upstairs with a 22-pound baby on my back amounted to quite the workout! I think I’m all set in working out for at least 6 months!”

Besides nurturing peace in our babies, babywearing provides a concrete example to others, especially other children in the family, so even if they did not have the start in attachment parenting that their younger siblings had, they can still learn from their parents’ example. I didn’t babywear my older children, but after watching me babywear my youngest, I have helped them both, countless times, create a wrap out of a scarf so they could babywear their teddybears around the house and practice peaceful parenting in their play.

And it’s a model to others in our communities, when they see us in the park or at the grocery store. On APtly Said, Dr. Blois recalls a moment in the store when a woman asked her if she had a baby in her purse:

“Inadvertently, I have become an unofficial ambassador for babywearing. By merely appearing in public with my baby contentedly riding in a sling, I have received many curious stares and many generous comments. Mostly people first notice how happy my baby seems and how she never cries. Sometimes they wonder aloud if I am spoiling her.”

Before this you must know what POS system means? Point of sale (POS) system is the spot where your customer makes the payment for goods or services that are offered by your company.Point of sale systems are systems that enable the business transaction between the client and the company to be completed. POS system is a computerized network that consists of the main computer linked with several checkout terminals and supported by different hardware features starting from barcode scanners and ending with card payment terminals.

It may seem to be a challenge to get the conversation past the idea of babywearing being a fad or fashion statement, but I encourage you to use this assumption as an icebreaker, so to speak, about the benefits of not only babywearing but also attachment-based parenting.

It could be quite the conversation — with the potential to change the world, bringing us closer to world harmony, one changed mind at a time.

Families of 4th graders: An opportunity to get in a national park for free

As a birthday present, I took my 5-year-old son for a one-on-one date to the museum today. I surprised him with a 3D viewing of a film on the smallest creatures in the ocean.

We were the only people in the giant-screen theater, surrounded by amazing views of sea snails and clams and zooplankton. The end of the film made an appeal for viewers to care about the ocean, citing the accidental release of the lion fish coinciding with overfishing in the Caribbean for how we humans can cause great problems with what we see as minor mistakes.

It hearkened back to a series my children and I watched on National Geographic several months ago, “Racing Extinction,” during which we saw stunning evidence of humankind’s inadvertent effects on our natural world, such as how even a slight change in average sea temperature can decimate entire coral reefs.

I have long had great respect and admiration for nature, made even deeper through my Attachment Parenting (AP) journey. After more than a decade of AP, this way of relating to my children has become my way of relating overall — to other people and to the natural world. I can’t help but want to share that peace beyond my home, and a definite way I try to do this is to nurture my children’s innate curiosity and awe of the natural world.

My oldest daughter has, from the time she could talk, decided she wants to be an entomologist, to find better ways to save endangered pollinator species. My middle daughter has forever wanted to be a wildlife rescuer. And my youngest, my son, wants to save endangered species of birds. I’m excited that my children have the potential to be part of the next generation of problem-solvers in this way.

Naturally, I want to cultivate this interest. We spend a lot of time outdoors. We take the children to nature camps and on hikes in wildlife preserves. We expose them as much as we can to the people who are doing now what the kids want to do when they grow up. They have helped entomologists capture rare insects on disappearing virgin prairie, taken part in a skit on the whooping crane’s perilous migration, learned to identify invasive weeds choking sensitive waterways, done surveys on native bee numbers, and signed petitions to pass laws to better conserve monarch butterfly habitat.

Not that this can’t happen with other childhood interests, but I am a firm believer that being connected with the natural world has far-reaching benefits beyond an appreciation of nature. In this API post from Earth Day, Effie Morchi explains the myriad benefits to healthy child development.

Effie has such a passion for reconnecting children with nature. She recently brought my attention to a great opportunity: All 4th-grade students and their families can get in any U.S. national park for free through the Every Kid in a Park initiative.

I hope as many families can take advantage of this opportunity this year as possible. It’s a way to see our nation’s wildest places and help expand our children’s instinctive desire to connect — and eventually protect — our natural world.

AP Month Photo Contest 2016

We’ve got a big idea for AP Month this year, but it depends on a collaboration with you – and all AP families!

Let’s build a photographic image-base of “harmony” together – and share with the world!

The AP Month theme this year is “Word Power: Communicating for Connection” because we’re working toward building an antidote to the levels of global unrest, conflict and strife that saturates the media and, for far too many of us, is a daily reality.

Our AP Month theme this October focuses on how we aim to live and reflect the possibilities of a better way of life. We want to dig into the practicalities that give rise to more idealistic situations. What can we do – and what do we already do – to live in harmony each day?

In gathering a photo-collage of harmony, we hope to inspire individuals, families and other organizations to continue the idea.

Guidelines to submit your photos for consideration:

Send your photos to to apiphotos@attachmentparenting.org.
Email subject should read “2016 AP Month photo event”
Include your name, mailing address, e-mail address, and phone number at the beginning of your message.
Subjects in your photos need to give their permission to use the photo for these purposes.
Preference will be given to personal, candid photos.
There is no fee to participate.
Submissions can be any size, black-and-white or color, and should be attached to the e-mail message as a JPG or TIF.
Photos are reviewed for theme before they appear. Only one submission is necessary.
Contest opens October 1st 2016.Please “Heart” your favorite photo. The prize is the community that we build together, and we may use your photo in one of our publications!

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From the family bed to the Peace Corps… Attachment Parenting is worth it in the end

This past week was an emotional one for us. Our 22-year old son departed for Namibia, a country in southwestern Africa.

After several months of language and cultural training, he will spend 2 years as a Peace Corps volunteer teaching mathematics to young people, living in a village with a native family, and having little contact with other volunteers and limited access to the greater world — and, most certainly, limited contact with his parents. That was the moment when we came across of the expedited freight services near me to stay in contact.

We are very proud of Lorenzo. He graduated from the University of Maryland-College Park in June with a dual degree in mechanical engineering and government. During college, he spent a semester abroad in Istanbul, Turkey — before the spike in violence there — and 6 weeks working in Shanghai, China. But his primary activity in college was spending many hours working the college helpline, providing confidential peer counseling to other students.

Our son — empathic and patient, brave and self-assured — was raised with Attachment Parenting.

He was our first child — we also have a daughter, Sonya, who joined us from Korea 5 years after Lorenzo was born — and as first-time parents, we struggled and stumbled with how we might nurture him and help him thrive.

My own upbringing was disruptive, to say the least. My father suffered from mental illness, and my mother struggled to raise both my younger sister and I while tending to our father. Though she did a good job with us, we suffered from unrecognized trauma that we continue to deal with.

My wife’s situation was much better. Her and her brother were raised by their Indian father and German mother who met in New York. Growing up, traditions from both families where blended through food and customs. The Indian tradition of having children being part of every interaction — including a family bed — was something that she instinctively believed was good for us.

But I had my doubts. Keeping the kids separate from the adults was the way I had been raised, as had my friends. Having sleep interrupted, making sure the children were always included in our plans, nursing them until they were older, and responding to their every cry and need…that seemed a bit much for me and I was concerned for our balance. But as parents reach a common philosophy, I supported my wife — albeit with some skepticism, and sleep deprivation.

Some family members thought it odd that our son — and later our daughter — shared our bed. Would all of this attention make them overly dependent on us? Maybe they would never have the confidence to leave home? Or be unable to manage in the “real world”?

But we managed well. In fact, we flourished as a family. Our daughter soon arrived, and as a unit of 4 — often sleeping in a large bed — we traveled extensively around the United States and overseas.

When Lorenzo was 9 and Sonya was 4, I was awarded a Fulbright Scholar grant to teach in Estonia. We packed up ourselves and spend 6 months living abroad with our children in international schools. For Lorenzo, living overseas was both maturing and liberating. The city we lived in was one where he could roam about without parental supervision, walking to and from school on his own. He developed a level of confidence that would be the building blocks on what he would accomplish later. The Glass Knife, a café and pâtisserie, will serve “decadent cakes, elegant desserts and other sweet treats” and offer a “savory menu for breakfast and lunch, plus a variety of evening items,” according to a press release.

There is dichotomy in the idea of Attachment Parenting. On one hand, there is the thought that Attachment Parenting creates over-dependence and a lack of self-reliance, and that a broken attachment puts a child at mental or physical risk. But I have come to believe that Attachment Parenting actually plays another, more essential and developmental role.

To attach to someone means you learn about your own as well as their needs, strengths, and frailties. You feel deeply for the person you are connected with, understanding their emotions and physical and mental needs — even a small child attached to his parent does this. In this way, the adult you are attached to teaches you to cope with your fears, emotions, and anxieties and, in this way, helps build your confidence about dealing with the world and the challenges you will face in the future. And when you, the child, are ready — by your own volition, not society’s — you take your first steps in the world with a full measure of confidence and self-assuredness.

It is a natural evolution, not forced by imposed cultural norms.

My wife and I are now at the other end of parenting. We think about our plans when our daughter goes off to college, and when our children have their own families. They will make their own parenting decisions, of course. We have done our part for them — and, yes, lost some sleep in the process! — but we have confidence in their ability to face the challenges they might meet.

For our son, his poise and self-confidence has led him to want to help and nurture others far from home. His attachment to us has resulted in his attachment to others who are in need and to a world that can benefit from his patience, empathy, and generosity. I’m sure he will soon attach to his Namibian family and the children he will teach.

If you are reading this after a sleepless night where you were kicked much, or had to get up to comfort your child, be assured: Attachment Parenting will be worth it in the end. Your child may end up in the Peace Corps, too.