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from Natural
Life Magazine, September/October 1998
The Natural Child
Column
Parenting And Educating That Respects
Children
What is Attachment Parenting?
by Jan Hunt
Attachment parenting, to put it most simply, is believing what we know in
our heart to be true. And if we do that, we find that we trust the child. We
trust her in these ways:
We trust that she is doing the very best she can at every given moment,
given all of her experiences up to that time.
We trust that though she may be small in size, she is as fully human as
we are, and as deserving as we are to have her needs taken seriously.
We trust that she has been born innocent, loving, and trusting. We do not
need to “turn her around”, to teach her that life is difficult, or train her
to be a loving human being – she is that at birth and all we need to do is
celebrate that, and support and sustain it.
We don’t have to give her lessons about life – life brings its own
lessons and its own frustrations.
We recognize that in a very beautiful way, our child teaches us – if we
listen – what love is.
We understand that if a child “misbehaves”, instead of reacting to her
behavior, we should always examine what has been taking place in her life:
What stresses, frustrations or frightening, confusing, or difficult
situations she has just experienced. We also need to examine whether we have
brought about any of these experiences, intentionally or not. It is our job
to be responsive parents, meeting the needs of our child; it is not the
child’s job to meet our needs for a quiet and perfectly well-behaved child.
We understand that it is unfair and unrealistic to expect a child to
behave perfectly at all times; after all, no adult can do this either. Yet
behind all punishment is the unstated expectation that a child can and
should behave perfectly at all times; there is no leeway. We see that
so-called “bad behavior” is in reality nothing more than the child’s attempt
to communicate an important need in the best way she can, given the present
circumstances and all of her prior experience. “Misbehavior” is a signal to
us that important needs are not being met – by us or by others in the
child’s life. We should not ignore that behavior any more than we should
ignore the sound of a smoke detector. We should instead see “bad behavior”
as an opportunity – an opportunity to re-evaluate our own behavior, to learn
about our child’s needs, and to meet those needs in the best way possible.
As Albert Einstein wrote, “Behind every difficulty lies an opportunity.”
This is true in general, but it is profoundly true in parenting. For
example, if a child chases a ball into the road, there is an opportunity to
teach her safety measures by practicing for similar situations in the
future. The parent could ask the child to purposely throw the ball into the
road, then come to the parent and report the situation. In this way, the
real lesson can be learned: It is the parent who needs to spend more time
teaching safety, not the child who should somehow have known this
information, and obviously does not yet know. Punishment is the most
damaging response: it is unfair, upsetting, and confusing, and...
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