WARNING: Time for a rant! Also: not my baby 
source: FreeDigitalPhoto.net
We’ve always embraced attachment parenting (AP) principles. Frankly, if it weren’t for the AP pillars of co-sleeping, babywearing and extended breastfeeding, I would have lost my marbles a long time ago. (Arguably, I never had them to begin with, but whatever.)
And while I’m more than happy to talk about AP ad naseum online, in real life, I tend to keep my opinions on parenting to myself. No matter how much I believe in AP as the right choice for our family, the truth is that it’s not for everyone. AP is very intensive; critics would argue too intensive. If you’re in a partnership, that relationship is forever changed and frankly, I don’t think all partnered parents can handle the fundamental shifts that AP demands. I’ll go so far as to say that a parent does sacrifice a lot of their individuality to embrace attachment parenting principles. But for those of us who abide by such principles, the deep bonds of trust you forge with your children are well the sacrifice.
Also, I make for a horrible attachment parenting advocate. I am constantly having to field the misunderstandings of what AP is and isn’t. (Damn you TIME for the misleading cover!) I wholly believe in AP’s principles:
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.
[ via API ]
Unfortuantely, AP’s often misconstrued as a form of helicopter parenting, indulgent and too child centered. (I’m still trying to figure out how you can be “too” child centered as a parent but I digress.)
Far from being the mature, well-spoken spokesparent that I think AP deserves — and ignoring the fact that AP is about removing violence – my natural inclination is to settle the aforementioned misunderstandings with a brick to the head.
I am a HORRIBLE attachment parenting advocate.
Case in point: Today, I was at the local elementary school, dropping TLE off for her weekly speech therapy session. While I was there, I happened upon two ladies, an older lady of grandmother-ish age and a young mom with a baby in a stroller, presumably there to pick up one or more of her older children. The two ladies obviously knew each other and the younger one asked about the older lady’s grandbaby.
The older lady went on to describe how her son picks up his infant whenever he cries. “Oh god, he’s spoiled him!” the lady lamented. . ”If you respond to their cries, they’ll always think that you’re going to do it.”
And I started to look for a brick. Lucky for her, the ones within immediate reach were well mortared into place.
The other lady was also aghast. “Right,” she agreed, pushing her stroller. “Kids, you have to teach them to self soothe while they’re babies. Let them cry, they’ll figure it out.”
“Exactly. We have other stuff to do, right?”
I’ll say this: you’re free to have your opinion and likewise, I’m free to have mine. That being said, I feel pretty strongly about the idea of letting your baby cry it out. And by pretty strongly I mean F*CKING HATE IT. If the foundation of AP is building trust with your child, then CIO is the ultimate in breaking that trust. And at some point, it’s not about attachment parenting principles anymore, it’s about common human decency.
Letting your older child cry out a tantrum is one thing but in my book, willfully allowing your infant to cry it out nothing short of child abuse. Babies cry because they need something, whether it’s to be fed, changed, held or otherwise interacted with. So I guess, yeah, they are crying to manipulate you into something. God forbid your baby grow up to think that, I don’t know, you’re going to pay attention to them when they need it.
Imagine being completely helpless, unable to do anything for yourself besides cry to get your needs met. If you feel hungry or need to be changed or, hell, you’re just plain lonely — you cry because that’s the only form of communication you have. But no one comes. You’re still hungry/poopy/lonely and no one’s coming to aid you. So you cry harder. And still no one comes. So you cry even harder. And still, no one’s there. So finally, you give up defeated because no one’s coming. You learn to stop crying because no one is coming when you cry.
If a care worker in a health care facility were to systematically ignore the cries of a patient in need, it would probably be considered abuse. Yet parents do this every day to helpless babies and as a society, we call this good parenting and congratulate parents on teaching their child to self soothe?
Dammit, where’s my brick?!
I know that sometimes there are things that need to be done – especially if you have older children that also need you. And that’s understandable. But for eff’s sake, at least look in on the child. Don’t ignore the baby because your hands are full. (And don’t get me started on CIO as a sleep training method. Somehow, that’s even worse. Respond to your baby during the day but at night, ignore them so everyone could get a good night’s sleep? At what cost, I ask?)
People that use the “other things to do” excuse get absolutely no sympathy from me. I had a baby who refused to take no for an answer and so I learned to do damned near everything with her strapped onto me at all times. If I can do it — with lupus, no less, though I didn’t know it at the time — chances are other people can do.
Also? How much a baby cries is not so reflective of one’s parenting skills as it is the baby’s own temperament. Some babies cry less naturally — you call these the “easy” babies. They cry and fuss a little when they’re wet or hungry and otherwise, are little angels because apparently “good” babies are ones that we can’t hear. Others are more sensitive — these are the high needs babies who tend to be more sensitive and cry at the littlest disruption to the world as they know it. But you know what? Responding to their cries will shorten their cries but guess what, they’ll still do it because that’s how they’re wired. Amazing how that works.
