The Parenting Oasis

Defending Our Choices September 22, 2008

I have been talking to a lot of parents this past week about their choices as parents, particularly the decision to practice Attachment Parenting. 

According to the API Website  “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. Attachment Parenting isn’t new. In many ways, it is a return to the instinctual behaviors of our ancestors. In the last sixty years, the behaviors of attachment have been studied extensively by psychology and child development researchers, and more recently, by researchers studying the brain.”

So what’s the drama all about?  I actually got an email from a mom in Michigan who, although a psychologist herself is afraid to have her son taken to a therapist because she knows she will have to defend her parenting practices.  Co-sleeping is attacked as unsafe, nursing past infancy seen as just weird.  Mom’s wearing their babies are warned they will never walk. Prioritizing your child’s emotional needs is somehow threatening to some people.

Now that we are long past babywearing and nursing, and the kids crawl into bed in the wee hours but we don’t really co-sleep- attachment parenting at my house is almost all about discipline or behavior or something like that.  I hate calling it discipline when the whole point is I don’t use consequences, threats or bribes and it isn’t really about behavior because almost always the behavior is related to feelings.  So mostly what makes my family weird out here in Apple Valley is that I parent around cooperation and relationships and emotional needs.  And despite what others might think, that means I do want all members emotional needs to be met- even mom’s and dad’s.

I don’t need to tell anyone how to parent although obviously that is often exactly what my work entails.  I believe that Attachment Parenting honors us as parents, allows us the kind of relationships we want with our kids and helps us build powerful, creative, healthy families. We have a lot of work to do in order to get this information out to the families who need it.  Kristin was telling about speaking with some African immigrants who approached her about wearing Alma.  They told her that they loved to see her wear her baby the way that their mothers had worn them.  When she asked if their wives do the same, they said no. They wanted to be modern American women.  What an ironic circle. 

So let us honor parents for their commitments and choices and support them in choices that foster strong family connections.

Maureen
mailto:parentingoasis@gmail.com

Being a Mom- the long view September 14, 2008

 This week is the anniversary of my becoming a mom.  Nate will be turning 24 on Tuesday.  It is interesting to reflect on my life as a mother and realize that I have been a mom almost all of my grown-up life.  I believe that becoming a parent is one of the biggest transformations in life.  And I have no sense of who I am that is not mom.  I learned to be a psychologist as a mother, I even learned to be a wife as a mom. Other than my family, there is only one person in my life who remembers that small window of my life when I was simply Maureen.

I love being a mom.  I love mothering.  Maybe it is easier to take on that identity when you don’t have a clear, solid sense of who you are anyway. Being a grown up mom means a pretty big loss- loss of identity, loss of freedom.  All the diapers and bodily fluids and no clear sense of accomplishment and no measure of success.  

All I can tell you is that it does get easier.  The enormous sense of responsibility lessens every year.  When you infant is sick or your toddler is naughty, it is hard not to wonder what you did wrong.  But they make their own choices and are their own people and you have influence and importance but little control.  Even my baby at 4 1/2 is clear that he is his own person and that I am not the boss of him. 

Whether you have been a parent months or years or even decades, it is a one direction transformation.  So welcome to the world of parenting and thank you Nate for the gift being your mom has been.

Maureen   parentingoasis@gmail.com

Fall Means Back to Work

So I sat down last  night to work on my newsletter.  My own computer is down and I am sharing with the boys.  I found out last night that the website is down because someone forgot to pay the rent and we have nothing on the calendar to report anyway this week.  I also was struggling with the crud this weekend.  I spent 20 minutes writing before the program crashed, losing all my work at which point, I threw in the towel and went to bed. Honestly, nothing I was writing was particularly helpful or positive last night.

What a difference a good night sleep makes.  All is better in the light of day.  How many times have I made judgements about the state of my life (or my parenting or my kids) that reflected mostly on my own tired and frustrated perspective?  Today I got up early, paid the bill and got right to work.  My parenting and my work at Parenting Oasis ebbs and flows with my energy level.  I have always said that after 9 pm, I am not a very good mom and have made it a priority to have the kids settled before the moon rises and I turn into grumpy mom.

What we feel like doing, what we want to do and sometimes even what we believe we are capable of have so little bearing on what our kids need.  They just need what they need and somehow we find it within us.  There are certainly days when Parenting Oasis continues on because simply because my passion and commitment win out over my doubts and worries.  And that is how parenting works- just keep showing up every day and doing the best that you can and know that what you are doing matters.

Maureen      parentingoasis@gmail.com