Help us tell your story! Describe what Attachment Parenting looks like in your home through this landmark, definitional survey designed to provide ground-breaking insights about AP families. Created by researchers at Southern Methodist University in collaboration with Attachment Parenting International, the survey is voluntary, confidential, anonymous and takes about 40 minutes to complete.
Monthly Links
API Links is a monthly e-newsletter to help keep parents, professionals, and others abreast of the latest news and research in Attachment Parenting and updates of API programs.
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Respond with Sensitivity
June 11, 2015
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June 1, 2015
In a way, summer vacation reminds me of giving birth. When it's over, we forget the difficult parts and look forward to the next one. Parent educator and mother of 6, Shoshana Hayman offers 3 tips on API's blog to making your next summer vacation a memorable time for both you and your children, in a positive way. |
June 1, 2015
Announcing ATTACHED SIBLINGS, the latest issue of The Attached Family online. Read one post or all. Share what inspires you with your friends and family. Features in this issue center on raising children with secure sibling attachments, with such topics as: |
May 29, 2015
Editor's PickChildren are more likely to use their strengths to effectively cope with minor stress in their life if they have parents who adopt a strength-based approach to parenting. Strength-based parenting is an approach where parents deliberately identify and cultivate positive states, processes and qualities in their children, the researchers explain. |
May 21, 2015
But what is empathy? It’s the ability to step into the shoes of another, aiming to understand their feelings and perspectives, and to use that understanding to guide our own actions. That makes it different from kindness or pity. And don’t confuse it with the Golden Rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” As George Bernard Shaw pointed out, “Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.” Empathy is about discovering those tastes. |
Strive for Balance in Personal and Family Life
June 8, 2015
If we are honest, it really isn't possible to enjoy every moment of parenting. Another bad night's sleep, a tantrum in the park, or frantically rushing between home and work is hardly the stuff family dreams are made of. It's perfectly natural that we don't -- and can't -- spend every moment basking in how blessed we are by our children. UK mother of 1, Yvette Lamb encourages stressed parents reading API's blog to take time to focus on everyday magical moments of their parent-child relationship. |
June 1, 2015
The Fellowship of the Sling Is Gathering NOW! |
June 1, 2015
Children might observe their parents’ fear or worries in their actions or overhearing their words, and then adopt those same worries. Another cause could be what the study calls “negative parenting behaviors”—unnecessarily shielding a child from something that a parent fears. Or on the flip side, parents might perpetuate the problem by allowing a child’s existing anxieties, like fear of heights or pain at the dentist, to dictate their parenting choices and allow their child to avoid those experiences, Eley says. A child’s anxiety could even be causing the parent’s anxiety. |
May 29, 2015
The issue of screentime is one that has come up in my group, API of Knoxville, from time to time. We have splits on the issue among parents who attend the group and even within our leadership team: There are AP families that don't believe in limiting access to technology like cellphones, tablets, computers, video games and television. And there are AP parents who don't believe in allowing any screentime. And in-between, there are AP parents with all kinds of limits and approaches to technology use. |
May 21, 2015
Susan Stiffelman's special live event with Alanis Morissette, talking about her new book "Parenting with Presence" https://susanstiffelman.com/live-broadcast-with-alanis-morissette/. Link also features free ebook gift from Attachment Parenting International.
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Feed with Love and Respect
June 5, 2015
Now, a new study in mice hints at another reason why breast-feeding the second baby could be easier: Our bodies seem to remember how to make milk. After a first pregnancy, milk-producing mammary glands remain in a state of preparedness, ready to quickly spring into action and feed subsequent babies, Camila dos Santos of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York and colleagues write May 19 in Cell Reports. |
May 28, 2015
Access the May 2015 issue of Breastfeeding Today. |
Other
June 5, 2015
It was 21 years ago on June 6, 1994, when mothers, LLL Leaders and special education teachers Barbara Nicholson and Lysa Parker would make a decision that would go on to influence families worldwide in raising their children more compassionately by founding the nonprofit organization Attachment Parenting International. API announces the Reedy Hickey Scholarship Fund for API Leaders and Leader Applicants on API's blog. |
June 5, 2015
Editor's PickBe included in the AP story! Help describe what AP families are like by participating in a landmark, definitional AP survey. Take and share this first-ever AP survey designed to provide ground-breaking insights into AP families. |
May 30, 2015
We’ve started reading the book titled Parenting without Power Struggles by Susan Stiffelman. |
May 28, 2015
The Milky Way is now on iTunes and Amazon!! Here are the links: Some press: |
May 28, 2015
Since the 1950s, the standard for cutting the umbilical cord required that it be cut within seconds of the baby's birth. This has been considered best practice as it is meant to reduce the risk of the hormonal injection—given to the mother to stop hemorrhaging—from reaching the baby's blood stream and causing health issues. However, since the drug has been replaced with a safer alternative, Burleigh has questioned whether or not this practice should remain in place. |
Practice Positive Discipline
June 5, 2015
"Overall, stepping in and doing for a child what the child developmentally should be doing for him or herself, is negative," says Nelson. "Regardless of the form of control, it's harmful at this time period." Nelson advises parents not to overcompensate by stepping back too far, for young people need support from their parents — just not control. "Lack of control does not mean lack of involvement, warmth and support," he says. |
June 1, 2015
It has become a commonplace idea that failure is good for kids, and builds resilience. But when children fail over and over and don't have the support to keep trying, all they learn is that they're failures. Resilience comes not from failing, but from the experience of learning that you can pick yourself up, try again, and succeed. That requires at least some experience of success, and lots of emotional support. |
Ensure Safe Sleep, Physically and Emotionally
June 1, 2015
Over the next weeks, we both tried, and failed, to stay awake while holding Jack. We were dozing off, still upright, on the couch or in a recliner or glider — waking in a panic every time we realized what had happened. This was not a safe choice. |
June 1, 2015
My husband and I spent a small fortune on rocking Moses baskets, hypnotic mobiles and luxury cots. I'd read up on Attachment Parenting - based on responding intuitively to baby's needs and keeping them close specifically by bed-sharing, breastfeeding and baby-wearing (carrying the tot on you in a sling) - and was pretty sure I wasn't 'that sort' of mum. Oh no, I was going to be in A Routine. Then I had a baby. |
May 21, 2015
When done safely, bed sharing makes mothers (and fathers!) and babies happy and has positive developmental effects on growing children. Surely mothers should not be stigmatized or considered irresponsible for bed sharing. In fact, 90 percent of all human beings sleep with their babies in some form or another! |
Prepare for Pregnancy, Birth, and Parenting
June 1, 2015
It was only when she stumbled on a Facebook page called Babywearing Singapore early last year that she realised she was wearing her baby wrongly. The 34-year-old recalls: "She was hanging too low and the weight was all on my shoulders. Also, I had put her in cradle, a position which I learnt can be dangerous because it causes her chin to press against her chest and this can block her airway." |
June 1, 2015
A fecal sample analysis of 98 Swedish infants over the first year of life found a connection between the development of a child's gut microbiome and the way he or she is delivered. Babies born via C-section had gut bacteria that showed significantly less resemblance to their mothers compared to those that were delivered vaginally. The study, which appears May 11 in Cell Host & Microbe's special issue on "The Host-Microbiota Balance," also found nutrition to be a main driver of infant gut microbiome development--specifically the decision to breast-feed or bottle-feed. |
June 1, 2015
When Inneshia Hart had her first child at age 20 and her household consisted only of her husband and the new baby girl and her, she had the luxury to stay home for as long as she chose. But when her son was born three years later, they had greater expenses. "The worries started about two weeks after I had my son," says Hart. "The bills started coming in and I thought, ‘We cannot live like this.'" |
May 26, 2015
The Friday just before Mother's Day, I was going about my faily business and realized I hadn't looked at my phone for awhile. As I went to grab it, I saw a screen filled with missed calls and text messages. I scanned it for any pertinent information, and my heart dropped as I saw the words: "Your Mom is in the Emergency Room. Please call." Mother of 2, Sandy Gordon Frankfort ponders the role of Mother on API's blog, APtly Said. |
May 21, 2015
Elisabeth Bing, known as the “mother of Lamaze” passed away on Friday, May 15th, 2015 in her home in New York City, NY a few weeks shy of her 101st birthday. Elisabeth, along with Marjorie Karmel, founded Lamaze International (then known as The American Society for Psychoprophylaxis in Obstetrics/Lamaze, or ASPO/Lamaze) 55 years ago. |
May 21, 2015
Kitzinger was an anthropologist and childbirth educator. As a childbirth educator, she pushed educators to go beyond just sharing knowledge, beyond just educating women about birth. She believed that we needed to confront the system in which birth takes place, to advocate in powerful ways so that women could give birth without being traumatized physically or emotionally. |
Provide Consistent and Loving Care
June 1, 2015
But as the kiddos begin to learn more about mama as a person (and not just as a baby-doting slave), the crying, skirt-pulling, separation-anxiety-every-time-Mom-leaves-the-room behavior begins to lessen. "By the third or fourth year of life," Bowlby noted, "the child increasingly understands that his or her mother has motives and plans of her own, and their relationship develops into a 'goal-corrected partnership.'" |
May 25, 2015
These two great trends — greater praise and greater honing — combine in intense ways. Children are bathed in love, but it is often directional love. Parents shower their kids with affection, but it is meritocratic affection. It is intermingled with the desire to help their children achieve worldly success. |
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