…asks Elinor, in our comments box below.
The short answer: “AP” stands for “attachment parenting.”
Pansy and Gorbulas
And the long answer:
Attachment parenting is an approach to raising infants and young children that places a strong emphasis on responding to a baby’s needs and fostering a strong, trusting bond between the baby and his parents. Dr. William Sears and his wife Martha (the parents of eight children) are probably AP’s most famous faces, but I actually started learning about the AP approach through the writing of Sheila Kippley of the Couple to Couple League. The La Leche League has been advocating this approach for years. There’s also some Catholic therapist guy out there with a blog who has written a book and other articles that include information on the AP approach, which he aptly describes as “natural law parenting.”
The premise of attachment parenting is that tiny infants need their parents, especially their mothers. (Yes, it does seem strange that we need a parenting book to tell us this, but these are the crazy times we live in….) It rejects the idea that babies cry to “manipulate” their parents.
Some highlights of attachment parenting include breastfeeding “on demand” (i.e., feeding the baby when he’s hungry, not just when you think he should be hungry), holding and cuddling the baby when he cries (instead of leaving him to “cry it out”), using a sling or other babywearing gizmo, and sharing sleep.
St. Bloggers who are interested in the AP approach include Alicia the midwife, Davey’s mommy and daddy, Dinka, M’Lynn, the Popcaks, Sparki,and Smockmomma (can’t speak for the other Summas yet.) (This list was right off the top of my head; apologies in advance to anyone who should be on the list and isn’t!)
Mothering with Grace is a website for Catholic moms interested in AP.
UPDATE: Add Bobbi to the list of AP St Blogger’s. She also has a list of AP links.
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The only thing I could possibly add is that I believe AP parenting is the cornerstone to family harmony. Through AP — which as you say can mean a variety of different practical approaches — each family member learns that they are equally valuable, that their needs will be met, and that each member of the family has a role in helping meet the needs of the others. Our helpless infants get the most “service” from the family because they have the most needs and the fewest capabilities. But as they grow and become more capable, the AP approach encourage parents to recognize that, to encourage and relish their childrens’ growing capabilities and to reward those developments with appropriate roles in the household.
I find that a lot of people read about APing an infant and think that parents are forever doomed to cater to their children. But I don’t think that’s what AP is about. It’s more of paying attention to your child and matching your responses to your child’s emotional, intellectual and physical capabilities. If that makes any sense,
Two random thoughts about this. First, the only La Leche Leaguer I ever knew personally was nursing a four-year-old. I didn’t mind – it was none of my business, after all – but this particular child had his mother jumping through hoops. He had clearly figured out that the one thing his mother would never refuse was “nums”; consequently nobody ever had a telephone conversation longer than three minutes with his mother, because he’d start whimpering for nums. He grew up to be a thoroughly disagreeable child, too, with no manners at all, and possessed of the mistaken notion that he was being funny when he was only being impertinent. That wasn’t the fault of nursing, of course, but of his mother’s spineless indulgence. Second, did you ever know anyone who nursed on a schedule? I never did, and I wonder how it could be done. I detested nursing, but for as long as I did it (nine months for the first, down to one month for the last), I always just fed the baby any time he opened his mouth. It seemed to work out all right: none of mine went on waking up at night past six weeks, and my fourth started sleeping through two days after we got home from the hospital.
Never nursed on a schedule, and have no concept as to how it is done. I think scheduling is for bottle feeding because there is a set amount to feed and so on.
My 21 month old does not sleep through the night, but he doesn’t exactly get up either, he rolls over to nurse all night long.The nature of breast milk is it digests quickly and efficiently, so it is not uncommon for breastfed children to wake up continuously through the night.
I still nurse my 4 year old occasionally. He is a pain in the butt (but he is my pain in the butt and I love him), has nothing to do with nursing, he is a high needs kind of kid. If he were my only child, one would think I am a horrible permissive type of mother, but my two older ones are not like that. As a matter of fact my father gave a homily once about how I was expecting number four when I was pregnant with Gorbulas and many people later said they had no idea I had two older children besides Fastolph because they sit quietly in the oews while we are always taking Fastolph back. His need to still nurse is more of a side effect of his high needs, not that he is high needs because he nurses. The older two weaned themselves at much younger ages.
Yes, the “no-neck monster” I knew had three or four older siblings who were well-behaved and very conversible. He was the last by several years, and born when his mother was about 45, so perhaps she spoiled him on that account. He hadn’t improved much by the time he was sixteen, which was when I saw him last. BTW, I’ve just remembered another reason I didn’t nurse on a schedule – I got letdown as soon as the baby started to cry, so it was either feed him or let my shirt get soaked. I tried nursing lying down; it worked all right from the baby’s point of view, but I could never get my neck and arms comfortable, and would wake up with an awful pain between the shoulder blades. The best posture for me was sitting up quite straight in the corner of the sofa with plenty of pillows under the baby and my elbow, and having a book open on the arm of the sofa (hardbacks best for this, especially in library binding).
“He is a pain in the butt (but he is my pain in the butt and I love him)”
There speaks a real mom!
You can add me to your AP list…..though we’re starting to come through the other end of the spectrum. (There are days when I wonder if the whole AP thing has backfired because we still have 2 twentysomething daughters living in our basement. But I think that’s more of an economy issue than anything I can blame on LLL and Dr. Sears. 🙂 )
I wanted to call all the negativists who needled me for nursing daughter #3 for slightly over 4 years, etc. etc. the day she took off for her cross country trip to AZ, LA, Las Vegas, Mt. Rushmore and more. Yes, they do let go of the apron strings. It was hard to see her go….and nice to see her come back. (But I can’t say that I collapsed on the curb as the car sped down the street blathering, “I wish I had cuddled her more when she was little.”)
I think we’re making a good mother/bad mother dichotomy out of this in a very unfair way. People should hold their babies as much as they like; I was always holding my earlier ones (by the time the last two arrived the first three wanted to hold the babies, too). What I decided was that I wasn’t going to beat myself up about putting a baby in his crib when he was crying, after everything – food, burp, diaper, walk outdoors, rocking chair, singing – had been tried to calm him down. When they were a bit older, they weren’t taught to “just sit there”, they were taught to obey Mommy, when Mommy told them to stop screaming, or to hold hands in the parking lot, or to go play with something while Mommy made dinner or even read a book for a little while. This was my rule: the children’s needs (food, sleep, education, discipline) came before my wishes (some degree of order, unbroken sleep, some time to myself). Their needs came before my needs (food, sleep, etc.). But as long as the first two rules were kept in absolute fidelity, I could further rule that my needs came before their wishes (wanting somebody to entertain them, wanting to do what they liked when they liked), and even that my wishes also came before their wishes. Sixteen hours a day of my care and my nearly undivided attention were quite enough for any child who wasn’t injured or ill or frightened by a bad dream. And while of course infants don’t cry to manipulate their parents, they frequently cry for attention when there’s nothing really wrong with them, and their parents are completely exhausted; and the parents shouldn’t feel like failures for putting the clean, fed, healthy baby in his crib and trying to get a little interval of rest. And anyone who thinks children of three or four never cry to manipulate their parents hasn’t been to Mass at my parish.
I think we’re making a good mother/bad mother dichotomy out of this in a very unfair way.
Elinor, I think you are misreading this post. It is not at all about how there is something wrong with people who do not practice AP. It is about how and why we AP and why it is important to us. When Peony and I decided to do Two Sleepy Mommies one of the main themes was AP. We blogged more on it in the beginning and come back to it from time to time. An anlogy would be we blog often about things we love about being Catholic, but that does not mean the true meaning of those blogs is “Why Every Other Religion is Wrong”. Just what it is.
And anyone who thinks children of three or four never cry to manipulate their parents hasn’t been to Mass at my parish.
I have not seen one person say anything to the contrary.