OUR NEXT MEETING

Friday, July 20, 2012 - 5:30 pm
AP Potluck at 355 Naughright Road, Long Valley

Topic: Attachment Parenting, Co-Parenting, and Extended Family

Attachment Parenting can be challenging in a world that still doesn't necessarily support the idea of granting children some autonomy even when they are very small and respecting them as individuals with their own ideas, wants, needs, and personalities. This can present a challenge when co-parents aren't always on the same page. And now that it's summer - which means summer vacations, often spent with extended family - the challenges can be greater when grandparents and other relatives challenge our parenting practices. At our next meeting, we will discuss strategies for dealing with these delicate issues while maintaining strong relationships among all members of our families.

Recommended Reading: On Being a Parenting Original by Kelly Coyle DiNorcia, Mothering Magazine, March/April 2008

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OUR LAST MEETING

Topic: What is Attachment Parenting? (And What Isn't?)
Date: Friday, June 15, 2012

In the wake of the infamous Time magazine cover asking women, "Are You Mom Enough?", a discussion has erupted over Attachment Parenting. Is it an extreme form of martyrdom, or is it a common sense way of raising children? At this meeting, we discussed the principles of Attachment Parenting, and talked about what it means to be AP. (Hint: it isn't about self-denial and total subjugation of the self to the betterment of the children!) We also talked about the idea put forth by Elisabeth Badinter in her new book that Attachment Parenting in general, and breastfeeding in particular, are destroying feminism by tying women to the home after they have fought so hard to gain equal footing in the workplace. For a thorough and thoughtful discussion of this idea - Why Women Still Can't Have It All - take a look at this article by Anne-Marie Slaughter in The Atlantic.

WHAT WE'RE READING

The No-Cry Sleep Solution

by Elizabeth Pantley

There are two schools of thought for encouraging babies to sleep through the night: the hotly debated Ferber technique of letting the baby "cry it out," or the grin-and-bear-it solution of getting up from dusk to dawn as often as necessary. If you don't believe in letting your baby cry it out, but desperately want to sleep, there is now a third option, presented in Elizabeth Pantley's sanity-saving book The No-Cry Sleep Solution

Pantley's successful solution has been tested and proven effective by scores of mothers and their babies from across the United States, Canada, and Europe. Based on her research, Pantley's guide provides you with effective strategies to overcoming naptime and nighttime problems. The No-Cry Sleep Solution offers clearly explained, step-by-step ideas that steer your little ones toward a good night's sleep--all with no crying.


ABOUT API

Attachment Parenting International (API) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit member organization founded in 1994 to network with parents, professionals and like-minded organizations around the world. API boasts an impressive group of board and advisory board members, including Dr. William Sears and Martha Sears, R.N., author and co-sleeping specialist Dr. James McKenna, Lu Hannessian of LetTheBabyDrive.com, author Alice Miller and Jan Hunt of the Natural Child Project, among others. API’s mission is to educate and support all parents in raising secure, joyful and empathic children in order to strengthen families and create a more compassionate world. In addition to providing assistance in forming Attachment Parenting support groups, API functions as a clearinghouse providing educational materials, research information, consultative, referral and speaker services to promote Attachment Parenting concepts.

Attachment Parenting International promotes parenting methods that create strong, healthy emotional bonds between children and their parents. Through education, support, advocacy and research, Attachment Parenting International seeks to strengthen families. More information about Attachment Parenting International can be found at www.attachmentparenting.org.

ABOUT ATTACHMENT PARENTING

The essence of Attachment Parenting is about forming and nurturing strong connections between parents and their children. Attachment Parenting challenges us as parents to treat our children with kindness, respect and dignity, and to model in our interactions with them the way we'd like them to interact with others.

Attachment Parenting isn't new. In many ways, it is a return to the instinctual behaviors of our ancestors. In the last sixty years, the behaviors of attachment have been studied extensively by psychology and child development researchers, and more recently, by researchers studying the brain. This body of knowledge offers strong support for the idea that this style of parenting is key to the optimal development of children.

Friday, October 3, 2008

Heart of the Home submitted by Kelly Coyle DiNorcia

Last night our Holistic Moms Network chapter hosted an amazing speaker, Teresa Haggerty, who basically spoke about the power of our beliefs and how what we believe influences (controls?) our lives. Afterwards, many of the moms shared their personal stories, struggles and concerns, and I was struck by the amount of pressure we moms put on ourselves.

Most of the moms expressed the belief that they are the heart of their homes. I happen to share that belief - mothers have a lot of power over the way a home functions and the emotional state of all its inhabitants. We believe that we have to clean the house, do the laundry, cook the meals, schedule the appointments, do the driving, arrange the social calendar, and do it all while maintaining an even keel and a happy smile. If we fail to do all these things we are a "bad mom" (in whose eyes I'm not sure - our partner (if we have one)? our children? our in-laws? our friends and neighbors? or our own???).

I began to think about the inconsistency of these two beliefs. On the one hand, we are "investors" in our families, to use Teresa's term. We give and give and give.....and yet we expect ourselves to not only give, but do it happily and gladly 100% of the time. We realize that our own mental state has a huge influence over the mood and behavior of our family members, yet we leave little or no time to fill our own tanks. No wonder so many moms feel inadequate, exhausted, frustrated and unappreciated. We've set ourselves up for failure because we hold two mutually inconsistent beliefs. On the one hand, we believe that it is our job to meet the needs of our families, whatever we define those needs to be, without fail or complaint. On the other hand, we believe that meeting our own needs is at the bottom of the "to-do" list every day.

So, in the spirit of the Eighth Priniciple of Attachment Parenting - Finding Balance, I'd like to propose a new belief: My needs are JUST AS IMPORTANT as my kids', my partner's, my family's, needs. Because if we don't believe it, how can we expect anyone else to?

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