What If Attachment Parenting Was The Norm?

What If Attachment Parenting Was The Norm? Read all the inspiring article on This Parenting Thing!

As a parent of a young child in this world, I’m sure that you can relate. We frequently hear or even live what our society has started to believe is freaking normal.

Babies? They cry, for sure! It’s normal for babies to cry for hours. Even, at 2 months, it’s the time they cry the most, we think.

Terrible two? Don’t get me started. We hear horrible stories that happened at the mall. We wonder how come our sweet baby, yeah who did cry more that he had too, is now very demanding and being an emotional terrorist in public.

I for one know it’s hard. I went with my twins in those stores. I feel you, dear.

Then we go on on Threenagers, Fucking Fours, and the list goes on and on…

Well, I think those norms are our Western society’s invention.

I know those behavior feel very real to most of us. We certainly see them happen, those pesky ones.

And I even believe they are merely symptoms of a greater Evil. I dare say it. I think it comes from of our traditional parenting approach.

And I’m not saying this evil is totally our fault. We were brought up this way, we evolved and do it more lovingly, but still, the results are saddening.

Consider this for an instant.

We brought up our twin boys the traditional way at first. But to see those symptoms appear, even though I was a devoted stay-at-home, loving mom, I felt something was wrong.

I came upon an approach of Continuum Parenting, that situates attachment parenting with an evolutionary approach. Jean Liedloff, and other anthropologists I read since then, are clear that our normal evolution goes in hand with habits such as natural birth, breastfeeding, babywearing, and cosleeping.

In all our great Western world evolution, it seems we destroyed sound parenting practice that could do so much for us and our kids.

I think of our 2-year-old girl, that my husband usually puts to sleep while I tend to our 4th baby. She was breastfed on demand, and I wore her all the time for the first 6 months, then on and off. She’s the sweetest girl there is, advanced, confident, happy most of the time, very attached to both of us. We joke that Everybody Loves Her.

Such a contrast, and baby is on those footsteps. He’s Baby Smiley. Always happy, our 6-month-old doesn’t cry more than 30 seconds a day, if ever, I swear. He smiles to everyone he meets. A nurse even wanted to steal him from my hands and show him to the whole staff last week.

So what if Attachment Parenting, Continuum Parenting, was the norm?

It has become one of my life’s goals. I imagine how it could heal families. How it could heal the world, well countries that have embraced Western culture.

Imagine how fun it would be to have thriving kids in your family.

What their happiness, sense of belonging, and tended hearts could bring to the world.

Don’t you think, too, that it’s the most courageous and inspiring undertaking we can do for our kids?