Are you a mother with a child between 1 month old and 14 months old? Since giving birth to your child, have you experienced postpartum depression? If so, please consider participating in this study.

This gives us an insight that goes much deeper than the need to understand addicts. Professor Peter Cohen argues that human beings have a deep need to bond and form connections. It's how we get our satisfaction. If we can't connect with each other, we will connect with anything we can find -- the whirr of a roulette wheel or the prick of a syringe. He says we should stop talking about 'addiction' altogether, and instead call it 'bonding.' A heroin addict has bonded with heroin because she couldn't bond as fully with anything else.

When we talk about trauma, we often start with a story or a question: “What happened during the war?” “Were you ever molested?” “Let me tell you about that accident or that rape,” or “Was anybody in your family a problem drinker?” However, trauma is much more than a story about something that happened long ago. The emotions and physical sensations that were imprinted during the trauma are experienced not as memories but as disruptive physical reactions in the present.

Editor's note: This post was originally published on Oct. 16, 2008, and it continues to offer a valuable perspective on passing along family values to our children.

We often reflect on whether Attachment Parenting International has made a difference in our efforts toward peace. API isn't about promoting just parenting strategies: We have a broader long-term vision we have often described as "peaceful parenting for a peaceful world."

Discipline without Distress and Parenting with Patience

For the last few days, my son has been hunched over an application for a summer program at NASA. I've been helping him, shoulder to shoulder, when he needs it, and I find myself staring at him when he's not looking. It's his junior year, and he'll soon be filling out college applications. How did we get here?

I feel a lot of love in my house. But there are conflicts, hurt feelings and misunderstandings. I know we are on a journey together to love each other the best we can -- to forgive and accept, and to challenge ourselves to feel our feelings without hurting others with our actions or words. This is a big challenge for me, having grown up with a parental mandate to be happy. What do I do as a parent who wants to validate emotions, live in an environment where strong feelings are OK and model communication that is not hurtful?

Raising teenagers is a frustrating business. We are not sure how much freedom to give them or how much responsibility they can handle. We try to set limits, but we get lost in dealing with their defiance adn counterwill. We are not sure when rebellion is healthy or when it is a sign of a deeper problem. Interacting with them is confusing. Sometimes they behave like young children, yet at other times they seem adult-like. One thing is clear: We have a responsibility to help them cross the bridge from childhood to adulthood successfully.

My husband and I realized fairly soon after adopting our first son that we needed to parent differently than a lot of friends and acquaintances around us. For example, nighttime cry-it-out methods, unfamiliar babysitters for parents' night out and even the use of timeout for perceived misbehavior were not going to work for us. As I read and studied about parenting approaches, I learned about Attachment Parenting.

This post was originally published on October 10, 2008, but its message about the importance of presence is as timely today as then.

It's normal to worry about how our children will turn out in the future. Will they accept the values and ideals that we want to pass on to them? Will they follow the path we hope they will take? Is ther a formula or method that will assure us of these things?

The biggest struggles I see from mothers in my API Support Group have to do with the addition of a second or third child. Whether it's an older child having difficulty adjusting to the new baby, or the mom herself struggling to meet everyone's needs, our API group meetings frequently come back to this topic and to the guilt surrounding it.

This post was originally published on Oct. 14, 2008, but so many parents through the years since and in the future can relate well to its message.

A tantrum ensued. I let her release her frustration for a few minutes. Rather than getting upset or doling out an unnecessary punishment, we waited until our daughter was receptive and offered a simple, affectionate gesture to let her know that we were here when she was ready. When she had calmed down and made eye contact with me, I signed "I Love You."