Authority is vital to discipline, and authority must be based on trust. It is crucial for baby to trust that he will be kept safe. An attachment-parented baby learns to trust the one person who is strongly connected to him. When an infant can trust his mother to meet his needs, he will also look to her to help him behave.
connected kids are less accident-prone
Securely attached children do better in unfamiliar situations because they have a better understanding of their own capabilities. In parent parlance, they are less likely to “do dumb things”! The organizing effect of attachment parenting helps to curb their impulses. Even children with impulsive temperaments tend to get into trouble less if they are securely attached to a primary caregiver. A child who operates from internal organization and a feeling of rightness is more likely to consider the wisdom of a feat before rushing in foolishly. This may be because connected kids are not internally angry. Anger adds danger to impulsivity, causing a child to override what little sense he has and plunge headfirst into trouble. In essence, connected kids are more careful. Also, connected parents are naturally more vigilant and are more likely to keep on the heels of their toddler when visiting homes that are not childproofed.
Attachment parenting promotes independence. If you are wondering whether attachment parenting will make your child clingy and dependent, don’t worry. Attachment parenting actually encourages the right balance between dependence and independence. Because the connected child trusts his parents to help him feel safe, he is more likely to feel secure exploring the environment. In fact, studies have shown that toddlers who had a secure attachment to the mother tended to play more independently and adapt more easily to new play situations than less attached toddlers. (To read more about how attachment fosters independence, see here).
Between one and two years of age, an infant perfects a cognitive ability called person permanence – the ability to recreate mentally the image of a person, even when that person is out of sight. A baby who is securely attached to his caregiver carries the mental image of that caregiver into unfamiliar situations. Even when mother is not physically there, she can be there in the child’s mind, and this gives the child further confidence to explore. Attachment parenting helps the child build a mental image that is loving and dependable, which helps the child feel confident and capable. A child who is pushed into independence before she is ready to maintain this mental image will be either anxious and clingy or she may register no concern whatsoever. Much of her exploring energy will be diverted to handling these feelings instead of into learning.
the unconnected child
Suppose parents, for fear of spoiling their baby or letting her manipulate them, restrain themselves from responding to her cries and develop a more distant, low-touch style of parenting. What happens then? The baby must either cry harder and more disturbingly to get her needs met or give up and withdraw. In either case, she finds that her caregiving world is not responsive. Eventually, since her cues are not responded to, she learns not to give cues. She senses something is missing in her life. She becomes angry and either outwardly hostile or else withdrawn. In the first case, the baby is not very nice to be around, and parents find ways to avoid her. In the second case, the baby is harder to connect with, and again, parents and child enjoy each other less. Either way, this child will be difficult to discipline. She comes to believe that safety and security depend on no one but herself. Problems in relationships develop when a child grows up thinking she only has herself to trust in. Since the parents don’t allow themselves to respond intuitively to their baby’s cues, they become less sensitive and lose confidence in their parenting skills, another set-up for discipline problems.
You can tell the unconnected baby by his expression – or lack of one. He does not seek eye contact and he does not evoke the warm feelings so evident with connected babies. “He looks lost” is a comment we once heard about an unconnected baby. You can also tell an unconnected baby by the way he holds himself stiff as if moulded to fit his baby seat rather than to soft shoulders.
As the unconnected child gets older, much of his time is spent in misbehaviour, and he is on the receiving end of constant reprimands; or he tunes out and seems to live in his own separate world. This child becomes known as sullen, a brat, a whiner, a spoiled kid. These undesirable behaviours are really coping strategies the child uses in search of a connection. The unconnected child doesn’t know how to regain a sense of well-being because he has no benchmark to measure attachment. He has difficulty finding a connection because he isn’t sure what he lost. This scene results in patch-up parenting, with perhaps much time spent in counsellors’ offices.
The unconnected child is less motivated to please; he’s less of a joy to be around. As a result, unconnected parents don’t find job satisfaction on the domestic scene, so they seek fulfilment in professions and in relationships not involving their child. Parent and child drift further apart. Unlike the connected child who is a joy to be around and keeps making healthy friendships, peers may shun the unconnected child. He even puts off people who can help him form connections. The emotionally rich get richer, the emotionally poor get poorer.
With professional counselling, children and parents can begin connecting and settle into a style of discipline that brings out the best in each other. It will require a lot of energy to accomplish this at a stage past when it naturally is designed to happen. Newborns are more into being held than six-or nine-year-olds. The best chance for staying connected later on is to get connected early. (See “How to Raise an Expressive Child”, and “Getting a Handle on Anger”.)
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
