When you think of attachment parenting, what image comes to mind?
For me it’s quite literal: a mom or dad wearing their baby, snuggled up and closely attached.
Attachment caregiving also makes me think of nursing, bed-sharing and spending as much time with one’s baby as possible – all things we actively practiced when we had our little one.
Attachment parenting is something we stumbled into while pregnant but we stayed with it because it just felt right. It felt instinctive and natural to us – and it was definitely the best way to raise our sweet, highly sensitive Z.
I was actually such an avid devotee of attachment parenting back in the day that I was even interviewed by our local paper about it.
I love this quote from the Attachment Parenting International (now known as Nurturings) website:
Your parenting journey is both unique to you and your family and a shared and timeless human growth process. Your parenting journey is formed moment by moment, choice by choice and accumulates into a general relationship pattern that serves as the template your child will use to interact with the world, in turn, over time.
Looking back, now that our little one is almost 14, I’m so glad we chose the close and connected form of parenting known as attachment caregiving. It set us on a path for healthy attachment, closeness and connection even through these challenging tween and teen years.
Here are all the posts I wrote during and about our early attachment parenting journey. I hope they will be helpful to new or expecting parents out there.
- Attachment parenting: it’s how we roll was my first time writing about how we discovered attachment parenting while pregnant and how much we loved parenting Z this way.
- How to be a breastfeeding superstar was written after Z and I faced and conquered a multitude of challenges at the start of our breastfeeding journey so I was feeling pretty confident!
- My parenting mantra: kind, loving and firm shows how we continued to use attachment parenting principles while parenting our then almost-tween.
- Parenting differently for different results talks about how attachment parenting may differ from mainstream views on parenting or how we were raised – and maybe that’s a good thing.
- Are you mom enough? was my response to a controversial Time magazine cover story with that same title. This post also features some pretty cute photos of Z at age two.
- Leaving is the hardest part was about how hard it feels to go back to work and leave your breastfeeding baby. Yes, it was hard – but I did it and made it work!
- Thank heaven for cosleeping talks about how difficult it was being a working mom when Z was a baby – and how cosleeping eased our nights. Nighttime parenting is easiest while asleep!
- Nursing helps working mom guilt is another post about the guilt I felt over leaving my baby to go to work – and how much breastfeeding helped alleviate that feeling.
- Top 5 baby and toddler hacks is a post that includes attachment caregiving as one of our favorite ways of making life with a baby easier and more joyful.
- On mother-baby bonding was a deep dive into the amazing, close and connected relationship I’ve always felt with Z – and it all started in those early, breastfeeding days.
Attachment caregiving was our way of life from Z’s birth through about age five – and it still informs our parenting today. Leaning into that close connection – instead of parental dominance or control – is key during these teen years when autonomy and independence are everything to our kiddo.
I’m also proud to be working with the founders of Attachment Parenting International (now Nurturings) as they release the third edition of their timeless and revolutionary parenting guide, Attached at the Heart – available now for pre-order and in bookshops in January 2024.
Did you use attachment caregiving principles with your infants or young children, and how was your experience? I’d love to hear your nurturing parenting stories in the comments below or over on Facebook or Instagram.
