Getting Attached: What It Means – Part One
Some believe that the best way to achieve the proper fit between parents and child is to practice a parenting style called attachment parenting. This style is a way of caring that brings out the best in parents and their babies. It is, in fact, only recently that this style of parenting has needed a name at all, for it is basically the commonsense parenting we all would do if left to our own healthy resources.
Parenting Your Baby
Don’t expect to learn everything at once. Parenting is a learn-as-you-go profession. It takes hands-on experience. These suggestions are just starter tips. From these basics you will grow and develop your own style, one that best fits your baby’s temperament and your personality. Also, there is no way you can completely decide on a parenting style before you have a baby. You have no idea what a baby will do to you and how drastically baby will change your outlook. Determining how much to hold your baby, what you will do when you baby wakes p at 3:00 a.m., and how long you will breastfeed requires on-the-job training. Reserve these decisions until you see what your baby is like. But here are some parenting-style ideas to consider before the job begins.
A few of the ideas shared here may initially sound strange and different from advice you have heard elsewhere. But please do not close your mind. Enter your parenting career with an open mind, or you may set yourselves up for a lot of frustration. The easy baby you are expecting may not be the baby you get. Stay open to new ideas, and then select what best fits your family. In return be assured that everything discussed here has been well researched.
The Seven Baby B’s Of Attachment Parenting
There are three goals that are seen as important for beginning parents:
* to know your child
* to help your child feel right
* to enjoy parenting
The style of parenting discussed here helps you achieve these goals. Here are the seven concepts that make up attachment parenting.
1. Birth Bonding — Connect with Your Baby Early
The way baby and parents get started with one another often sets the tone of how this early attachment unfolds. Take an active role in orchestrating the birth you want. Take responsibility for your birth, educate yourself, and work out a birthing philosophy with your obstetrician or birth attendant. A traumatic birth or an unnecessary surgical birth resulting in the separation of mother and baby is not the ideal way to begin parenting. In this case, part of the energy that would be directed toward getting to know your baby is temporarily diverted toward healing yourself. Feeling good about your baby’s birth carries over into feeling good about your baby.
The early weeks and months are a sensitive period when mother and baby need to be together. Early closeness allows the natural attachment-promoting behaviors of a baby and the intuitive, biological care giving of a mother to unfold. Early closeness gets the pair off to the right start at a time when the baby is most needs and the mother is most eager to nurture. Of course the process of falling in love with your baby, feeling attached or bonded, begins long before the day of birth and continues long afterward.
2. Belief in Your Baby’s Cries — Read and Respond to Your Baby’s Cues
One of your earliest challenges is to figure out what your baby wants and needs from moment to moment. This can be very frustrating and lead to “I’m not a good parent” attacks.
Relax! Your baby will help you learn to be a good cue reading. Researchers used to believe that babies were only passive players in the caretaking game. Now we know that babies actively shape their parents’ responses. Here’s how: Babies come wired with attachment-promoting behaviors (APB,s), magnet like behaviors so irresistible they draw the parent to the baby, in language so penetrating it must be heard. Some APBs are hard to miss — for example, your baby’s cries, smiles, and clinging gestures; others are subtle cues, like eye contact and body language. All parents, especially mothers, have a built-in intuitive system with which they listen and respond to the cues of their baby. Like a transmitter-receive network, mother and baby, through practice, fine-tune their communication until the reception is clear. How quickly this communication network develops varies among mother-baby pairs. Some babies give clearer cues; some parents are more intuitive cue readings. But good connections will happen. They will happen more easily if you remember to be open and response. Even an occasional “incorrect” response (for example, offering to feed a baby who wants only to be held) is better than no response, because it encourages your baby to keep working with you. childminder near me