I’m now halfway through month eight of new mommydom, and I’m getting my head above water and coming up for air. Wyatt is now happily creeping backwards around the kitchen and living room floors. The baby who always wanted to be held is now the baby who bucks in my arms when he wants to be put down. The baby who needed me to provide him with some sort of stimulating change every five minutes is now the baby who can spend a half hour to an hour at a time on the floor with the same collection of objects. I’m now in a position to review my practice of attachment parenting and conclude that it has lived up to at least one of its selling points, to my great relief. Dr. Sears and other proponents have long claimed that attachment parenting results in kids that are more, not less, independent. continue reading »

It’s not even one month since I wrote the last post on attachment parenting, and already my thoughts are different. They’re not totally different, but I’ve further refined and qualified the insight from The Continuum Concept about not being child centered. Previously I had decided to let Wyatt whine more often. Now I’m working harder to keep him constantly stimulated. I don’t believe this will spoil him, and I think the effort will be worth it.

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Now that my son is five months old, I have had more opportunities to learn and reflect, and I’ve decided that I’m not as attached to attachment parenting as I used to be. If I erred, though, at least I erred on the side of babying my baby too much rather than too little. He’s only five months old, and I’m glad he got through his early, fussy months without crying very much. In a nutshell, however, I have come to believe AP can be bad for both the baby and the parents if it is taken to an extreme or misapplied. Why? Because a baby needs a happy Mommy and Daddy. Time to stop living our lives in fear of the fussies!

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