Attachment and Discipline - January Update

In my introductory post about expanding Hodgepodge Parenting, I listed seven areas of interest that I hope to blog about.  After some reflection, I realized that this list could be narrowed down to five areas of interest by merging attachment parenting with gentle discipline, and by merging multilingualism and homeschooling.  The latter both deal with educating our daughter. The former both have to do with the underlying relationship Alex and I have with Natalia, and the overall parenting philosophy that determines what we do and how we do it when it comes to general daily care of our daughter.  So without further ado, here is how we are doing in this department as we kick off 2015.

Attachment parenting deals with several aspects of baby care that are ongoing: sleep, feeding, physical proximity, responding to baby's cries with love, being cautious of "baby trainers", and maintaining a balance in your life (ie. not overdoing it to the point of exhaustion or resentment). The seventh aspect of attachment parenting is actually the first, birth bonding, but since it is not ongoing, I won't be discussing it.

Physical proximity of parent and child is a key aspect of attachment parenting, as it involves several areas of life: breastfeeding on cue and extended (ie. past the one-year mark), cosleeping with baby (either sharing the same room or the same sleeping surface), and baby wearing.  The bottom line is that I want to be close to my daughter as much as she wants to be close to me.  It's really that simple. Yes, sometimes we have to put a little distance between us, but that's where the balance aspect comes in.  Overwhelmingly, my day and night is spent being close to her.

 Taking a nap with her dollies.

I choose to cosleep with Natalia for several reasons.  One, it makes nighttime parenting much easier. I never have to actually get out of bed when she wakes up, with the rare exceptions that I've had to get her some medicine, or back when I was overdoing it a little and practicing elimination communication at night and would get up to put her on the potty three times a night.  (The urge to pee would wake her up, and so her diaper stayed dry all night when I engaged in nighttime EC.)

But cosleeping is not just for mere convenience.  It's also been a wonderful bonding tool.  We get a lot more cuddles in this way.  It helps that we also breastfeed (Natalia is 14 months old, and the World Health Organization recommends nursing until at least age 2).  Because we keep our mattress (no bed frame) on the floor, she can engage her independence by getting off the bed in the morning to go get her favorite dolly, or at night to bring daddy a book to read before he goes to sleep in his room.

Which brings up a logistical consideration that perhaps some people may wonder about.  Alex doesn't cosleep with us.  There are several reasons for this.  One, he wakes up very early in the morning to go to work, and he is in charge of feeding and walking our dogs.  All of this can get quite noisy, and there is no reason to wake up Natalia before she is good and ready.

Two, sorry booboo - Alex snores, LOUDLY, and even I cannot tolerate the sound of his so-called "loud breathing" when I'm counting on silence to help me drift off to sleep.

Three, and this is a minor consideration but works to our advantage, its a space saver and budget helper that we do not need to live in a home with an extra room where we would "keep" Natalia at night.  Minimalism does play into this quite a bit.  I have no need for my "own" bedroom, since all I do in a bedroom is sleep.  I have a few drawers with my clothes, some more clothes hang in the walk-in closet that also serves as overflow for Natalia's toys that get rotated in, and that's it.  We have our laundry in the bathroom, and that's where I get ready in the morning.  We do our "TV watching" (generally on our laptop, or via the Roku player) in Alex's room.  There is absolutely no need for me to have my "own" bedroom, or for Natalia to have her own room. When she gets older, yes.  But not yet. (And for the uber curious, spousal intimacy does not require sharing sleeping quarters.)

Ok, so in addition to cosleeping and breastfeeding, I also like to wear Natalia in a carrier sometimes. Most days, she is running around free as a bird, especially around the house, ever since she became mobile at 8 months and started walking at 11.5 months.  Depending on circumstances, when we go out, she also walks around a lot.  But there are times when it just makes more sense for her to be up close and personal, right under my nose, so to speak.  When I'm vacuuming, or sometimes doing other chores that keep me on my feet, and Natalia either feels left out and wants up, or I simply want to make sure she doesn't get into anything while my attention is diverted, that's a great time for her to snuggle up to me in a carrier.  It comes with the added bonus of her getting an adult's eye view of what's going on in big people land.

Daddy is melting snow.  You gotta see that up close and personal!

 When we go on walks, I like to wear her instead of pushing her in a stroller.  For one thing, it's a pain to try to get the stroller set up, either by dragging it down a flight of stairs from our apartment, or by unfolding it after getting it out of the back of our car.  It's just much simpler and less hazardous to get her situated in a carrier before we leave. During the colder months, I also feel better about keeping her bundled up against me, with a big jacket zipped up around both of us, instead of trying to keep the wind off her face as she's bundled up in a stroller.  (I have had to do that when walking to the farmer's market for groceries, but it's not my preferred mode of transporting her!)

I will say that there is an additional benefit to wearing Natalia.  When we are in a social situation with a lot of strangers, people are less likely to touch her if her face is near my boob (though make no mistake, people still do, even as they feel me up in the process!).  Even better, people don't tend to ask if they can hold her if they see that she is attached to me!  The reason this is important is that we do not push her to go to total strangers before she is comfortable in their presence.  I don't care if it's a relative, if she doesn't know the person very well, she won't feel ok about being held by them, and we won't force her.   It's important for her to know that her primary attachment is and should be to her parents, and that all other relationships must be filtered through this trusted primary relationship with mom and dad.  Once she sees us interacting with the new person, with time she warms up to them and often is fine with a short visit in their arms.  But keeping her in a carrier prevents the awkwardness of having to say - even to little kids, maybe especially to little kids - "no, you can't hold her, no you can't carry her, she's not a doll!  She's a little person with her own likes and dislikes, her own personality, and you need to respect that!"  If she's in a carrier, we can just skip this exchange.

During naptime

Aside from physical closeness that comes with baby wearing, breastfeeding, and cosleeping, we have also begun the arduous task of figuring out the best way to start disciplining Natalia.  While we love her to pieces and she is the center of our universe, we do not want her to come to believe that she is the center of everyone's universe!  It is not healthy for a person to feel entitled.  Not only is it not nice, but it also sets the person up for disappointment when life proves to treat them like it does everyone else.  It has been difficult for me to know the boundaries between being loving and being permissive.  I am working on this.  That said, I need to clarify what I mean by discipline.  I do NOT mean punishment, as that is already too late in the game.  We shouldn't just wait for kids to mess up and then "teach" them not to do it again by punishing them.  That should be a last resort, if at all.

Instead, discipline at its core simply means guidance, teaching a child what is the right thing to do, how to do things, when, why.  Essentially, discipline is setting and enforcing boundaries.  So for example, while I love to give Natalia freedom to explore various activities, including drawing with crayons or even a pen, it is never going to be OK for her to experiment with this activity on the wall, on the furniture, on the floor.... In other words, we are in charge of maintaining boundaries to her freedom until she has developed sufficient self-discipline to stay within the boundaries on her own. If I don't want her to write with a pen on her dolly's face, then I need to not allow her to walk around the house with a pen in hand.  I can't just tell her once (or even repeatedly at this point) to only write on the paper and then punish her when she forgets or doesn't understand.  She is not mature enough to stay within the boundaries, and so it is my job to prevent problems from happening.

So this has been an overview, really, of where we are with attachment and discipline.  Starting next month I hope to keep it short and specific to any new developments since this writing.

Above we see Natalia helping mommy with dinner.