Here are three of my four children: Alyssa, Cassi, and Steven. They were not raised with "Attachment Parenting." I just thought I would show you a picture of them. They are 28, 22, and 24. {Ryan, 26, will be in a picture soon in an upcoming post with his wife, but all of this applies to him also!}
I allowed them to cry when they were babies. I even let them cry themselves to sleep and they never slept in the same bed with us. {We even spanked them, but that may have to wait for another post!} They are all happy, well-adjusted adults. So I am just going to give my opinion on "Attachment Parenting" and my experience not using it.
What I understand "Attachment Parenting" to be is not allowing your child to cry...Ever. Oh my! Talk about making parenting difficult. My feeling about this style of child-rearing is that the child is the boss.
I am sure there are plenty of success stories with this type of raising children, but I will tell you mine...Mine was pretty easy. At two months old, we trained our children to sleep through the night. It took a week. They cried a lot, but crying never hurt anybody.
Within one week, they were sleeping eight hours straight and we all felt better! They were all great sleepers their whole childhood. They never climbed into bed with us during the night. I never remember them having nightmares. Maybe we were just lucky, but it sure worked for us. I have some friends who used "Attachment Parenting" and motherhood was difficult for them. They were always very tired, rarely sleeping for more than two to three hours at a time.
Our children knew we were boss at a very young age. They weren't going to run our lives, we were going to run theirs. At nap time, they took a nap whether they wanted to or not. At bedtime, they went to bed whether they wanted to or not. It made child raising much easier. I needed that time alone. I needed a good eight hours of sleep a night to stay healthy. Your adrenals need that much rest to repair themselves. The sooner your children realize that the world doesn't revolve around them, the better.
Now if only I trained them to keep their rooms neat as soon as they were walking...Instead, I trained them to have messy rooms, because I didn't train them to clean their rooms. My girls, thankfully, have outgrown that and are very neat, but not my boys. Erin knows this, but to Steven's future wife..."He doesn't keep his room neat." I am so sorry about that! ;) {But he does sleep well!}
