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Tag Archives: attachment parenting

All About Tantrums – A Holistic View of Tantrums At All Ages

23 Monday Sep 2013

Posted by IfByYes in Shhh, I'm Reading

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

adults, All About Tantrums, attachment parenting, babies, books, child development, crying, discipline, emotions, independence, Karyn Van Der Zwet, older children, parenting, reviews, tantrums, teenagers, toddlers

Karyn Van Der Zwet, who you will see on my blog roll as Kloppenmum, came out with a new book recently, and she kindly sent me a copy to review.

All About Tantrums is probably the only book out there that really is ALL about Tantrums. If you Google books on tantrums you will come up with a lot of books about TODDLER tantrums.

But Karyn’s book isn’t age specific.

In fact, it gives multiple levels of advice based on the age of the tantrumming person, from 9 months old to teenagers to YOUR AGE. That’s right – her book has sections dedicated to ADULT tantrums as well, and what to do when you have one.

What Karyn does is break down the word “tantrum” into (I counted them) 15 tantrums with 35 sub-categorized tantrum types. And she not only describes what each one looks like and how to tell one from the other, but how to deal with each and every kind.

It sounds like a lot of information, but it’s actually insanely helpful, because I’m betting that every kid doesn’t throw every kind of tantrum. Chances your kid only throws tantrums over a couple of things on the list. And when you realize that you’ve been following generic advice which would work great for, say, an Intentional Tantrum (subtype Entitlement Tantrum), but that your kid is actually throwing a Brain Pain Tantrum (sub type Has To Be Done Tantrum), you realize you’ve been handling it all wrong.

Even if your kid doesn’t throw tantrums, it’s a great explanation of why kids do the things they do.

Continue reading →

Attachment Theory 101 Part the Second: Mediocrity for the win

13 Friday May 2011

Posted by IfByYes in How is Babby Formed?, My Blag is on the Interwebs, Pointless Posts

≈ 25 Comments

Tags

ambivalent attachments, amygdala, attachment parenting, attachment theory, avoidant attachments, babies, behaviour, brain development, child development, childhood, emotions, impulse control, neuropsychology, parenting, parenting styles, prefrontal cortex, secure attachments, toddlers

Remember how I threatened you with a sequel to my Attachment Theory 101 post?

Ha! You guys thought I forgot, didn’t you?

Well, I didn’t. I just try to space these super serious posts so I don’t scare you all away. You’ll notice that this post will be followed up by something entirely frivolous, because that’s what the people want.

In this post:

How attachment theory applies to the biology of the human brain and body, and why extreme methods, like Tiger Mom or Blossom Mom “strategies” of parenting don’t really make a lot of sense.

Or, put even more succinctly, why it is important to be a mediocre parent and good to screw up every now and then, as long as you hug and make up afterwards.

Continue reading →

Attachment Theory 101, Part The First.

26 Saturday Feb 2011

Posted by IfByYes in How is Babby Formed?, Life and Love, Well, That's Just Stupid

≈ 23 Comments

Tags

attachment parenting, attachment theory, myths, parenting, psychology

I am somewhat ashamed to admit that until @NotMaryP over at Daycare Daze made this post, I had no idea that attachment parenting was so despised by the very people who practised it.

I read Daycare Daze specifically because I admire her excellent authoritative parenting style and wish desperately that I lived close enough to send Babby to her daycare when he is a year old. But I recently found out that to her, Attachment Parenting is four-letter phrase. Since my foundation is in Psychology and Biology, I learned about Bowlby long before I ever heard of Dr. Sears and so I missed the whole attachment parents = permissive hippies connection.

My understanding of attachment theory comes psych courses, rather than from popular culture.  I’ve always been a bit of a shut-in, so this isn’t the first time I’ve realized that I missed something big (I found out when I was 14 that there had been this guy named Kurt Cobain, who was now dead, and that his band Nirvana had started a whole movement called “Grunge” and I was like “What happened to the Beatles?”).

Apparently, to most people, “Attachment Parenting” as considered to be the name for what Perfect Husband and I call “Please Parenting” – the kind of parents who beg their tiny children to behave and alternately scold or coddle during tantrums rather than calmly enforcing proper boundaries.

Ironically, this actually violates attachment theory.

This is how I feel when I encounter Fundamentalist Christians. As a child, I learned about Christian forgiveness, about the dangers of wealth, and about accepting the differences of others. The fact that Christianity is now largely associated with Republican mysogynist, homophobic, and capitalist agendas baffles me… because it seems completely in opposition to the whole point of Christianity.

Daddy loves me, this I know

Now here I am, being told that Attachment Parenting is associated with Please Parenting, and I can only shake my head in disbelief.

So now I am here now to explain Attachment Theory and debunk this bizarre misunderstanding once and for all.

…at least, among the 200 people or so who happen on my blog every day.

Continue reading →

To Shut Up or Not To Shut Up: A Parent’s Question

11 Friday Feb 2011

Posted by IfByYes in How is Babby Formed?, Life and Love

≈ 31 Comments

Tags

attachment parenting, babies, dvds, friends, friendship, parenting, parenting styles, psychology, research, tv

When you have friends who are also parents, things can get awkward when parenting philosophies clash.

I have known since I was a teenager that I wouldn’t let my baby watch tv, and that I would use a diaper service, and that I would carry my child in a carrier instead of lugging around a car seat, and that I would breastfeed. They didn’t even feel like decisions. They were things I felt I knew about myself.

When I was getting my B.Sc in Psychology, I added things to my mental list of future parenthood.

I would practice attachment parenting, because I learned in Interpersonal Relations and Emotions classes how vital a secure attachment is to a person’s future happiness.

I would use babytalk (sorry, “parentese” :-p) with my baby, and sign language, because Psycholinguistics taught me that they actually speed up language development.

Watching a parent in a store, I would think about how I would deal with a discipline problem, using methods I had learned from Behaviour Modification.

Now I am a parent, and so are some of my friends.

And it can get awkward.

We see reflections of ourselves in the people around us

People feel very personal about their parenting decisions.

Everyone wants to be a good parent (I hope). No one wants to believe that they might be doing things wrong, and yet that fear lurks beneath the surface of every truly good parent. For that reason, people tend to get violently defensive of their own parenting techniques.

So I tread on eggshells.

I nod and smile when people suggest letting my baby cry it out, rather than lecture them about attachment styles. I downplay my use of the cloth diapers. Instead of talking to them about links to asthma, and low sperm counts, I tell them that “it’s laziness, really”, because the diaper service will deliver diapers to my house.

I don’t want to hurt my friends by suggesting that they did things wrong by letting their child cry it out, or by using disposable diapers. I don’t think they did do anything wrong. I just know I don’t want to do it.

Many of my friends are excellent parents whom I admire very much, and these little things are very minor in comparison to the many other things they do as parents that I wholeheartedly agree with. Some of them made those choices many years ago, when there was less information on the subject. So I don’t tell them why I make the choices that I make, in case they feel like I am lecturing them or implying that they did things wrong.

Doing this goes against my natural instincts, because I am a lecturer by nature. However, I was blessed with a friend of lesser intelligence when I was younger, and the hurt she invariably felt whenever I lost patience with her taught me the beginnings of self-censorship. I still don’t always know when to shut up, but I’m better than I used to be, and I know that parents don’t take lectures on parenting styles sitting down.

So I shut up, but sometimes it is really hard.

The other night, when a friend offered me her DVD for infants, which she referred to as “baby crack” I had to think fast to turn it down politely. I had an idea that a reflexive “Oh, HELL no, why don’t you just offer him some methamphetamines while you’re at it?” would not be a well-received response. This is a kind and intelligent person who doesn’t deserve that kind of rudeness.

I suppose I could have just accepted it from her and just never played it for Babby, but then she might have asked me how Babby liked it, and if I had been amused by it myself, and that could have started a whole web of lies. So I summoned every bit of tact I had and said,

“Thank you, but we have a DVD of original sesame street, and that’s enough for now.” I neglected to mention that there’s no way Babby is watching that before age two or three, either. I resisted adding that we don’t want Babby watching TV because pediatricians recommend absolutely no television before age two. I just said no thank you, and hinted that Babby was watching other things.

I feel bad, as if I had lied to my friend, because in a way I did lie. I misled her to think that I was not opposed to DVDs for infants, and that I had my own collection of such things. On the one hand, I spared her feelings and avoided insulting her own parenting choices. I feel that this was the right thing to do.

On the other hand, she babysits for us sometimes, and so I feel like I have delayed the inevitable… unless I want to take the risk that some day she will play “baby crack” for my own child… something I’m sure she wouldn’t do if she knew that it was against my rules. But if I tell her my rules, I’ll be risking making her angry and hurt.

What do you do, when someone suggests something for your child which violates your parenting beliefs? Conversely, what do you do if someone lectures you on your own?

I have some questionable parenting tactics myself

Did you hear that? That was the sounds of my brains hitting the wall

06 Sunday Jun 2010

Posted by IfByYes in How is Babby Formed?, Well, That's Just Stupid

≈ 27 Comments

Tags

attachment parenting, car seat, consumerism, minimalism, pregnancy, rear-facing, stroller, travel system

So, it’s getting to that point when we are beginning to talk of actually buying baby stuff.

So far, we’ve been accepting hand-me-downs from all quarters. We’ve been given an exersaucer (which I consider morally dubious, but it was free), a high chair, two boxes of miscellaneous used baby clothes, some baby blankets, a baby gate, a baby gym for tummy time, and a number of new sleepers, onesies, receiving blankets and similar from Perfect Girlfriend. One of my friends (who does communications and graphic design) is happily designing a nursery mural as a gift to me.  We’ve browsed through dressers and cribs and I think I’ve picked out a couple in our price range that I like.

BUT I’m starting to freak out about the whole car seat/stroller business.

Now, you need to understand that we are both rather minimalist by nature.

Neither of us own a Blackberry, we have never signed up for Twitter, and our car, which we adore, is a tiny little Toyota Echo which I plan to use until a Vancouver driver inevitably smashes it irreparably. When we got married we kept our registry small because we didn’t like registering for luxuries we didn’t really need. Instead we registered for a few things we knew we would use on a daily basis and asked people to contribute towards a memorable honeymoon in Paris and Tuscany, which we will treasure forever and takes up no space in our cupboards.

Therefore, we don’t really like the idea of lugging around a bulky infant car seat everywhere rather than just carrying our child, or of being those people who can’t leave their house without the entirety of their nursery hanging off the edges of the giant stroller that encases 8 pounds of brand-new infant and ten pounds of bottles, diapers, wipes, and probably some crown jewels as well. These people seem to use their stroller as a big thing to shove me out of the way with when I am shopping, or as a sort of buffer between themselves and my Echo when they jay-walk.

The stuff we’ve read about  “container babies” just seems to confirm our instincts. We don’t want that much stuff (we would never have bought an exersaucer ourselves, for example) and it doesn’t look like it’s even good for the baby to have it all.

Our picture of  ourselves as  parents:

We get one of those all-in-one car seats that take you from birth basically until graduation. It is comfortable, convertible, economical and we install it and leave it in the car until a Vancouver driver inevitably smashes it irreparably.

When we arrive at our destination, Babby is gently lifted out of the car seat and placed in either a sling/carrier, or a lightweight rear-facing stroller which we unfold from the back of our wee Toyota Echo. We carry a small diaper bag for diaper changes, and I bring my boobas to feed Babby if he gets hungry.

After all, we reason, this is still more equipment than your average tribes person would need, and it seems like infant development experts keep harking back to indigenous peoples as examples of people who actually seem to know how to do it right.

But reality is beginning to hit us, and we don’t like it one little bit.

We’ve discovered that unless you want to spend a gazillion dollars, the only way to get a rear-facing stroller is to buy one of those “travel systems”. In other words, a massive yacht of a stroller that accepts an infant car seat. But we don’t WANT a massive yacht of a stroller OR an unconvertible, lug-around-with you car seat. Maybe it’s the minimalism talking, or maybe it’s because we’re both so sensitive of our own personal body size, but whatever the psychological motivation, one thing we feel very clearly:

We don’t want to take up the entire bloody world with our massive cadillac of a stroller.

It’s a tiny baby. Why does something we could hold in our arms need to be carried about in something that takes up more space than I do?? Why are bigger strollers cheaper than smaller strollers? Why can’t I stop using italics?

Besides, how do we fit a stroller that size into the tiny trunk of my dear 2003 Echo? Get a new car, when our current car is four-door, with a tiny wheel base, and an incredible safety rating, and was made back in the days when Toyotas were made to last forever? Forget THAT.

But all the other affordable options of comfortable, lightweight, easy-to-fold strollers face your baby outwards. I’m not a fan of this, but even if I didn’t care, my husband really, really does. It’s practically the only baby-related thing that he feels strongly about, so I’m not going to begrudge him this, especially since I agree. So we keep wandering back to the travel-systems.

“Besides, you want the infant seat,” a friend told me. “You get to value your baby’s sleep, and they fall asleep in the car. It’s nice to be able to clip the seat out without waking the baby. Besides, where would you put the baby when eating a restaurant or something?”

My dreams of minimalism were vanishing. I suddenly see myself  using the massivo yacht stroller constantly lest I wake up my slumbering container baby. I see us having to buy a second car seat six months in, because Babby has outgrown the old one, even though we have no money,and we’re still stuck with the yacht stroller.

Then I talked to my mother.

“What do you need a stroller at that age for anyway?” my mother said, when I fretted about this to her. “I didn’t have a car seat that went in and out. When you were small I just carried you everywhere in the Snuggly, and when you got bigger I popped you into an umbrella stroller.”

So why not just buy a lightweight rear-facing stroller, and an economical convertible car seat, and a baby sling/carrier, just like we planned?

OH YEAH.

BECAUSE IN ORDER TO HAVE A REAR FACING STROLLER, YOU NEED TO BUY ONE OF THOSE CONTAINER-BABY CAR SEATS AND THE STROLLER WON’T EVEN FIT IN YOUR CAR.

OR BE RICH.

Besides, where would we put the baby in a restaurant?

I give up. It’s all too complex. Anyone want a baby?

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