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What Is Attachment Parenting |
It is a ‘nurture’ parenting approach that creates strong emotional bonds between baby and parents (especially the mother). It encourages responding to baby’s needs promptly, so she develops a trust that her emotional needs will be met. The result of this strong trust between child and parents helps her develop into a secure, independent person able to form good relationships in future.
Who started attachment parenting? The term Attachment Parenting was coined by Dr. William Sears - a paediatrician in California. Dr Sears and his wife have raised 8 of there own children using this method and have written many very good books on the topic. He did not start the concept but rather brought it to light in the western world. He observed how mother’s in various cultures cared for their children in a compassionate and nurturing way, forming a strong bond between the mother and child. Many studies have been done in the field of psychology that prove that children who are able to form strong, secure bonds with a parent(s) and know their needs will be met, grow up to be compassionate, caring and emotionally strong adults.
Responding quickly to your baby’s needs: This is the key to attachment/instinctive parenting. The only way that your baby can tell you that she is distressed is by crying. Responding to her cries quickly teaches her to trust you in meeting her needs – a baby left to cry for a long time will eventually stop, BUT the lesson learnt is that her cries do not help and her caregiver cannot be trusted to come to her when needed. This first lesson in trust can have a lasting effect on a your baby’s future ability in form trusting relationships. Babies cry for many reasons: hunger, tiredness, discomfort and loneliness. It is this last one that we are told to ignore - that this is manipulation on Baby’s part. Babies get lonely and their greatest desire is to be with their caregiver, this is not manipulation but an instinctual need on the baby’s part. She intuitively knows that the only way she can learn about the world is through her caregiver and therefore it wants to be close to you. This is why building a strong attachment between you and your baby is so much more than just meeting her physical needs for warmth, food and safety - it is interacting and spending enjoyable time with her so that she can learn social interaction and love from you.
Wearing your baby: Carrying your baby in a soft cloth carrier that keeps the baby close to you meets the baby’s need for physical contact, security, stimulation and movement. These are all very important for optimal brain development. Babies who are carried often are less fussy and have better intellectual and motor development
Avoid frequent or prolonged separations:
Babies as discussed earlier have a very strong need to be close to a loving parent. It is though daily care and loving interactions that strong attachments are formed. If the mother/ main caregiver is away from the baby frequently it can interfere with this attachment. It is best to try and avoid being away from your baby too much, especially when they are preverbal and this separation can not be explained and can cause them intense grief and anxiety.
There are going to be times when you will need to be separated from your baby and in these inevitable situations try and find someone that they baby knows to look after them and try not too leave them for too long. If you have to go to the doctor dentist etc try and take someone with you that can hold the baby rather than leave it at home as you will be away from the baby for much longer then.
Babies need their mother at night too. Most babies do not like being alone in a room where they can not sense her. It is therefore natural for them to cry, this is not manipulation. The baby knows that it is safe with its mother and will try and call her if it senses she is not there. Babies left to ‘cry it out’ will eventually stop and may even sleep though and so parents think that the few nights of screaming were worth the effort as the baby now sleeps. But in fact all that the baby has learned is that no one answers its cries so it stops. This does not mean that it is any less lonely or that it would not still prefer to be with its mother.
There has been some concern of late about babies sleeping with their parents and you’ll find some basic guidelines and more information on this at our website - www.earthbabies.co.za.
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