The language of “attachment” parenting

I love words. I like thinking about the origin and history of words, I enjoy learning new words, and using the correct word in a particular situation is really important to me. Which may be why something bothers me that really isn’t such a big deal. I want to say that right off the bat. I’m very likely developing an odd twitch in my eye over something that wouldn’t bother nine out of ten people.

So here’s my issue:  I get bothered about the language of “attachment parenting” proponents. As a parent who has worked with children where attachment was an issue (in our group home, foster parenting and adoption situations), I know what a difficult situation it can be to create an attachment with a child. So it irks me a little when I read posts from parents who either imply or say outright that not doing “attachment parenting” techniques creates the potential for actual attachment issues in an otherwise normal parenting relationship. I’m not buying it.

These posts I read will talk about how a mother put her child in time-out a couple times and realized she had created this distance between them by punishing her child. She felt she had created an attachment problem. I have read mothers talk about feeling they have damaged their kids by letting them cry or feeding them on a schedule or disciplining them in nearly any way. They feel extreme guilt and worry that they’ve squelched their child’s spirit. And they frame this in the language of attachment. This language choice makes me want to offer some perspective.

Those of us who are working on attachment issues with our children are dealing with kids who have been through trauma. Maybe it’s the trauma of being taken from their birth country, or removed from their unsafe relatives, or the trauma of abuse, or even the trauma of an unhealthy prenatal environment, traumatic delivery and removal from their mother at birth. These moments of trauma create the possibility that a child may struggle to trust the caregivers in their life. That attachment has to be intentionally created by showing a child you are a trustworthy person. It is tedious work that takes time and consistency. This is the kind of attachment parenting I am familiar with and the techniques I’ve used to accomplish it have been as varied as the kids who have been in my home.

Can I be totally honest with you? In creating an attached relationship with our first child (adopted from Africa at ten months) I did just about everything wrong, according to the attachment parenting experts. I fed him on a schedule. There were times I let him cry. He slept in a crib by himself. But here’s the thing—if I had it to do over, I’m not sure I’d do much differently. As a malnourished baby, Josh seemed to need the consistency of a feeding schedule and it helped him distinguish between his hunger needs and his needs for other things. We tried co sleeping and it was not a fit for any of us.  And knowing the thoroughly attached, well-adjusted, compassionate seven year-old that baby became, I have no trouble cutting that inexperienced Maralee quite a lot of slack. Whatever failures there were, the aggressive love I have for that child has overcome them. I believe consistent persistent love matters more and parenting philosophy matters less.

If you were able to give your child good prenatal care, you have been the consistent caregiver in their life, you have treated them with love and met their basic needs, stop freaking out that you may be ruining them through some parenting philosophy choice. Kids are much more resilient than that. Attachments are not created or ruined in a day (or a sleepless crying night). I have seen too many good mothers agonize over parenting minutia and beat themselves up over imagined relational problems when babies and toddlers act like normal babies and toddlers. And if you are able to make the most perfect, gentle parenting choices, your kids may still find fault with what you do and choose to do things differently for your grandchildren.

I love parenting, adore my kids, and spend lots of time reading and researching parenting issues, but I know I may be missing the needs of my kids in spite of my best efforts. I had wonderful parents, but I know some things that worked for my siblings didn’t work for me. There were ways my parents adapted to be the best parents for me, but there were also ways I learned to thrive in circumstances that were less than ideal for my personality. That’s life. If my parents had asked me, I’m not sure I could have articulated what I needed in ways that were helpful because I didn’t have the maturity to know what I needed.

Even in situations of abuse and neglect, kids still prove they can rise beyond their circumstances. Some of the people I admire most in this world are those who have chosen hope and beauty in spite of the homes they came from. When we imagine we’ve ruined our kids or created attachment problems because we made a child sit at the table until they finished their peas, I believe we are imagining ourselves as more powerful than we should. I think we’ve started to major on the minors because we want control instead of focusing on the big picture for our kids, which we can’t control. We can’t create a gentle world for our children as they grow up. This is an unsettling thought, so instead we zero in on trying to make their homes places of peace. I think it’s an admirable goal, but the guilt we heap on ourselves when we perceive a failure is disproportionate to the amount of damage we’re doing (or not doing at all).

As a mother of a large family (we currently have our four children and a foster baby), I can promise you that as much as I might want to have a peaceful home, it is not always possible. Kids have conflict. I have to keep the chaos from sucking us under. Sometimes someone has to cry because they are not the top priority (i.e. bleeding trumps eating). If I decided any amount of conflict or frustration or tears were a sign of a parenting failure, I’d probably never get out of bed. What seems good in theory for a first child, may not be the parenting ideals that make sense for the family of five. But that hasn’t had any impact on my ability to create strong, healthy attachments with my kids.

I am happy to support my attachment parenting sisters. There are elements of attachment parenting I love and have incorporated into my routine. My belief is that parenting is 18 years of figuring out what works for you and your family. Different kids are going to have different needs and needs that change over time. Some mothers start out with a desire to be super structured and regulated and over time realize a child needs more of a gentle parenting approach. Some mothers start out as freewheeling hippies and maybe it’s child number four who pushes you into set bedtimes and chore charts. Sometimes we change for a particular child or just to make it through a season or maybe because we need something to change for our own sanity (it may be important to mention that mothers are people with needs, too). I do not have a particular parenting theory that guides all my parenting decisions and I absolutely don’t have a theory I think should guide EVERYBODY’S parenting decisions.

So go ahead and be an attachment parent. Just be conscious of the words you use to describe it. Some of us are struggling through actual attachment issues and the techniques that work for you may not work for our situation. Have some extra grace for us as we figure out what our children need. While you’re at it, have some extra grace for yourself, too. And maybe making your child sit at the table until they’ve finished their peas won’t ruin them after all.