Attachment parenting enables intimacy. Attachment-parented kids have a look about them. You can spot them in a crowd. They are the persons looking intently at other persons. They seem to be genuinely interested in other persons. I love to engage these children in visual contact because they are so attentive. The reason these kids will look you straight in the eye is that they have grown up from birth being comfortable connecting to people, and they connect appropriately. Their gaze is not so strained or penetrating as to put off the other person, or so shallow as to convey lack of interest. It’s just the right visual fix to engage people and hold their interest.
Much of a child’s future quality of life (mate and job satisfaction) depends on the capacity for intimacy. Therapists we interviewed volunteered that much of their time is spent working with people who have problems with intimacy, and much of their therapy is aimed at re-parenting their patients. Because connected kids grow up learning to bond with people rather than things, they carry this capacity for intimacy into adulthood. Many a night I watch two-year-old Lauren inch over and snuggle next to Martha in bed. Even at this young age Lauren is learning a lifelong asset – the capacity for feeling close.
Attachment parenting helps you discipline the difficult child. This style of parenting is especially rewarding in disciplining kids we call high-need children. Sometimes parents don’t realize until their child is three or four years of age that they have a special child who needs a special kind of discipline (for example, a hyperactive child, a developmentally delayed child, or a temperamentally difficult child). By helping you shape your child’s behaviour and increase your sensitivity to the child’s special needs, attachment parenting gives you the right start that increases your chances of having the right finish. Connected parents have a head start in disciplining high-need children because they are sensitive to their child’s personality. The connected high-need child is easier to discipline because he is more responsive to his parents. One of the reasons temperamentally difficult children are difficult to discipline is they are disorganized. As we discussed earlier, attachment promotes organization. In fact, studies comparing the long-term effects of early parenting styles on a child’s later development show that attachment parenting (or the lack of it) most affects the character trait of adaptability (the ease with which a child’s behaviour can be redirected to the child’s and parents’ advantage). Adaptable children are better prepared to adjust to life’s changing circumstances. They learn to accept correction from others and eventually correct themselves. Some children are born puzzles. Attachment parenting helps you put the pieces together.
reconnecting
What if, due to medical problems, domestic changes, or just bad parenting advice, you weren’t able to connect with your infant during the first two years, and now you are having discipline problems with your child? The beauty of human nature is its resiliency, the ability to bounce back from a poor start and have a happy ending. Yet reconnecting can be complicated by developmental mistiming. If you connected early, you were bonding when your baby wanted to bond. Trying to connect with the older child is more difficult because you are trying to bond when the child is working on breaking away. Still, it’s never too late to get attached. If you are having discipline problems with your child, no matter what your child’s age, step one on the road to recovery is to examine the depth of your parent-child connection. If it is weak, strengthen it. Remember, a child’s attitude wasn’t built in a day, and behaviour doesn’t change overnight. You may need to devote six to twelve months to the reconnection process. This time may include drastic lifestyle changes, involvement in your child’s projects, a high frequency of focused attention, and lots of time just having fun with your child. One parent we know home-schooled her six-year-old for a year; another father took his seven-year-old with him on frequent business trips. One parent described his reconnecting process with a difficult child: “It was like camping out with our five-year-old for a year.” Whatever you need to do to shorten the distance between you and your child, do it; and discipline will follow naturally.
Timing is important. Developing children take two steps forward when they need to act and feel independent. The child may be generally negative; “I do it myself.” During this stage parent-child conflicts are likely to occur. Then they take one step backward, a positive stage when they return to home base for some needed emotional refuelling. During this stage, the child is most open to reconnecting. Watch for openers: the child sits next to you on the couch while you are reading; stop reading the magazine and read your child. Your older child reappears for the nighttime story to the toddler and hints for “one night” sleeping in your room; honour this request. When your child shadows you, take the opportunity to reconnect. If you try to bond while your child is trying to break, you are likely to meet resistance.
building better-behaved brains
The developing brain of an infant resembles miles of tangled electrical wire called neurons. At the end of each neuron tiny filaments branch out to make connections with other neurons, forming pathways. This is one of the ways the brain develops patterns of association: habits, and ways of acting and thinking; in other words organization. Attachment parenting creates a behavioural equilibrium in a child that not only organizes a child’s physiology but her psychological development as well. In a nutshell, attachment parenting helps the developing brain make the right connections.
The unconnected child, however, is at risk for developing disorganized neurological pathways, especially if that infant has come wired with even more than her average share of disorganized pathways. This child is at risk of developing behavioural problems later on, namely hyperactivity, distractibility, and impulsivity – features of one of the most increasingly prevalent “diseases” in childhood and now adulthood – attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). A person’s brain grows more in the first three years than anytime in life. Could the level of nurturing during those formative years affect the way the behavioural pathways in the brain become organized? We believe it does, and we also believe that research will soon confirm that many later child and adult behavioural problems are really preventable diseases of early disorganization. (See related topic, “Disciplining the Hyperactive Child”.)
Attachment parenting encourages obedience. The real payoff of attachment parenting is obedience. This style of parenting, besides opening up parents to the needs of their baby, also opens up the baby to the wishes of the parent. The universal complaint of parents is “My child won’t obey”. How compliant your child is depends upon his temperament, which you can’t control, and the depth of your parent-child connection, which you can influence. Because your minds mesh, the connected child is more open to accept your perspective and switch from his mind-set to yours, to listen to you instead of being closed to you. The connected child trusts that parents know best.The attached child wants to please.
Even the iron-willed child bends to the will of the mother or father who operate on the parenting principle “The stronger my child’s will, the stronger must be my connection.” It is this connection that gives parents confidence. Wanting to please and trying to obey are the behavioural trademarks of the connected child. Jenny, the mother of a high-need baby, who is now a strong-willed four-year-old volunteered: “Initially attachment parenting took more energy and was less convenient. Now caring for Jonathan is easier because discipline flows naturally between us. I’m finally beginning to cash in on my investment.”
For more benefits of attachment parenting and discipline, see: Chapter 3, “Understanding Ones, Twos, and Threes”; Chapter 7, “Self-Esteem: The Foundation of Good Behaviour”; Chapter 8, “Helping Your Child Express Feelings”; and the special feature “Inner Peace”.