THE IMPORTANCE OF ATTACHMENT STYLE PARENTING

Simply put, the better a person's parenting skills the more likely their offspring will not only survive but thrive!

This can even be seen in the animal kingdom.
 Let's take most fish, they usually have little or nothing to do with their eggs and baby fish (there are exceptions).
Most fish lay eggs and abandon them offering no parental care or support.
With this lack of support, fish need an extreme number of  fry or offspring to even insure any will survive.
 A few like many species of the Cichlid family actually stay around and protect their young till they are old enough to protect themselves. The benefit is these fish have become very intelligent fish. with a high survival rate.
 Octopus who also protect their eggs and young are very intelligent. The mother is actually so protective that she refuses to leave them to find food and eventually dies from starvation.

As we go across the animal kingdom we continue to find the level of nurturing offspring and intelligence go hand and hand with parental protection and support and nurturing.
 Almost all mammals practice what we call attachment style parenting, while most reptiles practice detachment style parenting.

As animals evolve they parent more lovingly and their social skills and their intelligence increases. However within any given species some individuals, mostly those who are in captivity, may parent less diligently and/or lovingly.
The results besides having an effect on future generations, is an effect on  the offspring in ways we are only beginning to imagine, including these findings that you can look at on; Mothers action affect baby.  Francis Champagne, Josie Diorio, Shakt:Sharma andMichael J. Meaney... " "When a baby girl rat got an extraordinary amount of lick based attention from her mother she went on to have higher than average levels  of estrogen and oxytocin" These findings suggest that maternal licking/grooming influences the development of of estrogen sensitivity in the brain regions that regulate maternal behavior, providing a potential mechanism for the inter-generational oral transmission of individual differences in maternal behavior." 
Male babies from different species who got lots of maternal attention grow to be more protective and very strong members of their species. Perhaps this is due to confidence from nurturing.

This illustrates the extreme importance of care a baby should receive and the absurdness of the concept of 'the baby self soothing fad'  which will produce less connection to the mother and father and the human race as a whole.
Plus the next generation will also likely suffer and down the line it will go unfortunately, unless there is some intervention or healing on the individual.

I think many of you have seen the pattern including the usual superior intelligence of mammals and birds and the social skills of both and the usual caring and nurturing style parenting of both.

 A wild orangutan for example has only one baby at a time and nurses that baby for 7 years, the first few months almost constantly then several times a day for years and at 4 years of age nursing becomes a few times a day and over the next 3 years once a day or so or sometimes less ( offspring's choice), this very gradual weaning goes on for the last 3 years of the 7 year nursing period.
Wild Chimps nurse for 4 years. Both of these species practice attachment style parenting in the wild and except for humans encroaching on their habitat, they are extremely successful species.

Such dedication to parenting has brought many species to the top of survival and has contributed greatly to the intelligence within the species.

 If nurturing a child is a way to insure survival and a higher intelligence, why are so many parents behaving as if their presence and dedication is not very important?
Some people seem to feel like parenting is of second rate importance.

I feel and I hope you do too, that there is no other job in the world that is so very very important!
It is time we honor parents that are doing it in a patient and loving way!

PARENTS NEED TO BE HEALED

        It still surprises me when I check the internet for articles that are baby or children related  and find so many very angry comments.
While I realize these comments are not from the majority I would like to take a moment to help heal these seemingly hurtful thoughts and projections.

These comments are usually things like "I want the teacher to spank my child if he isn't listening.". or "Just wean that spoiled toddler now" or
( when relating to breastfeeding in public ) "How disgusting! How would women like it if I exposed my penis?" and so on.
The question is why? Why are these people so angry at children and their need to be understood? What have these small innocent people, barely starting out in life, done to deserve this?
Is this a case like so many others where the people who are screaming the loudest are those hurting the most?

 Babies and children have feelings too. Very tender and sensitive ones I might add. We were all babies once and although many do not remember, we all needed love and patience. Some of us got less than others and some got almost none at all.

Is this why some people think is it ok to strike and or spank a baby or child into submission?
Is it because it is easier not to deal with all the hurt and just repeat what was done to them by callously repeating the same pattern? For to make a kinder choice would mean reexamining and reevaluating.
It may seem easier to just lash out all that anger but lashing out has never healed anyone. Being healed of emotional pain makes life so much more livable, so much more rewarding. It is like a weight from your heart has been lifted and now you can breath.


                                                         BREASTFEEDING

On breastfeeding many adults were not even held often as babies let alone breastfed.
Many have deep rooted hurtful sub-conscientious unresolved feelings.

At one point we all had strong feelings of wanting to be held and cared for.
 Toddlers and babies today still want the closeness that breastfeeding provides.
Does this make them " little spoiled monsters"? Even though they are born as we were with the right to have someone who loves them unconditionally and who gives of them self in this most beautiful way.
 Our species was created for long term nursing !

About nursing keep this in mind. It should be something both mother and child enjoy but even if you want to wean a gradual process is beneficial over an abrupt one.

For those that are enjoying this special bonding experience you need not submit to peer pressure.

The Bible mentions nursing over 3 1/2 years as being normal.

 Our species closest relatives the Chimps ( who develop faster than humans ) nurse 4  1/2 years in the wild and orangutans nurse 7 years in the wild. So how can your baby be spoiled by wanting what he needs?

We are long lived species that has a life span of 70 or more years not one that has a life span of 10 -14 years and nurses 6 weeks. We are a very slow developing species that needs lots of time to develop.

Breastfeeding is for calming, nurturing, health, bonding and of course nourishment.          
                                      
                                      TO SPANK OR NOT TO SPANK
 The evidence against spanking is enormous.

Children need both parents as extremely important sources of love and understanding.
Many adults today had parents who it seemed were just waiting for a slip up or a mistake to unleash physical or psychological harm on them.
 These were the very people you were suppose to trust!
How confusing to think your closest person is someone hitting you or getting angry with you.

Why do this to another generation? First forgive your own parents.
It is ok to admit maybe they were scared themselves and did not know what they were doing.
 Then do something better.

What do you think your small sweetheart will have to look forward to when his/her biggest chance of being understood (you) has decided it is time for aggression and no more Mr. or Mrs. nice guy?
 Children make mistakes.
When you become a parent it is time to give and give some more. Give patiently. Besides making mistakes children are very needy.
 They are helpless and totally dependent and it takes time, lots of time to grow less needy and more independent.

Since they are needy if yours has any hope of becoming a confident adult you should be very patient and kind to him or her. Love and patience does not make a child or baby spoiled.

As your child gets older guide him towards doing what is right and following the rules. A constant understanding guide is so much more valuable than someone to be feared and later on rebelled against.
Understanding and patience mixed with teaching, communicating and guiding goes a long way.
It is not a choice between I will ignore what you do or I will withhold love, strike you and be angry with you.
There is so much to be said about teaching and guiding consistently. 
                                     
Back to the spanking issue for a moment.
All the research shows spanking does not work and only causes worse problems, but that is another article.
I will say that 99% of violent criminals were abused, hit or spanked as children. So spanking does less than little to stop the problems in the world.
Many say " well I was spanked and I am fine."  Are you really fine? With the current issues facing our country I notice too many people who are not so fine.
The amount of tranquilizers and antidepressants that doctors prescribe show many people are not feeling so fine and the unfortunate over drinking of alcohol shows the strong need for people to relax and drown out their thoughts. Many have come to accept this as normal but it is an indicator that many people are not really as fine as they think.



I do believe the world is mostly a beautiful place and life should be a rewarding experience and that good and light prevails over darkness, I just think we can all get there in our own lives by being the best we can be and that means being our loving self.
Not our selfish self that is in pain but our patient loving self. 

I pray for our hearts to be healed.

Change Your Mind And Then The World!

There is perhaps no greater way to change your life than by changing your perspective.  Let's say for example instead of the nightly news reporting negative things that happen, they start reporting as many positive and happy things as they have time for, night after night. What would you personally think and do? Would you be happy or would you become suspicious, thinking they are hiding your news, your bad news? Surprisingly many of you would probably be more nervous and stressed than you may think. When you do think about it there would not be enough time to air all the good news and many would not tune in anyway! Would you be interested in all the loving families that had a lovely dinner that night? Or how about the many people that want peace in the world and were doing their best to be the peace they desired? Maybe you would be interested in reports about all the people who got well after an illness? But honestly would you watch?
 There is so much good in the world and so many good and even great things happening all the time! The wonder is why do we support all this negative stuff by watching and then focusing on it?
At the same time we should give our support emotionally, physically and financially as much as we can to those in need, without believing in and accepting the world is a terrible place.
The real world you need to keep an eye on is the world of your thoughts. It is only this world that can change everything for you. When you heal your thoughts you can start the process of not being scared or depressed anymore and you can start to be more inspired and creative, maybe starting a new and wonderful business or hobby and so on.
Maybe you can be the beacon of light that helps a friend or a child.
 After all first come your thoughts and then your feelings and then your actions. Who knows how great things will be for all of us if we just take the first steps. The first steps to heal ourselves and then the world!

Babies Need To Be Nurtured!

The incredible journey of our lives starts out literally in a breath taking way. From the very first moment that we are born into this world we are a combination of many things.  We are of course a combination of both sides of our families. Your mouth a little like Aunt Jessie's on mom's side and ears as big as Uncle Ted's on dad's side. Fiery tempered like grandpa Smitty but good looking like grandma Sarah and so on. But there are other traits too, traits that we don't usually acknowledge.

We are born with DNA that spans back much further than we can imagine. DNA that goes back so far that in every new human there are genetic memories. What are these?
 For example worms are not normally afraid of light but in a scientific experiment scientists gave a group of worms electric shocks when the lights went on. Of course they became fearful of any light, however the interesting thing is, their offspring were actually born afraid of light. Even tho this experiment was not done on them!

With humans one thing is we all come from days when there was lots of danger especially for  newborns and children. So much so that if a mother were to put her infant down when he did not want and he cried, a predator would have an easy lunch or if a mother were to let her baby cry for any reason and not sooth him immediately it would attract some very unwanted attention, think lions! So mothers who invested 9 plus months carrying their baby during gestation were not likely to ignore their offspring. In fact survival depended on responding in a nurturing way to babies and children. Largely the nurtured survived and the not nurtured perished and on this went. So much so that offspring were born subconsciously expecting to be nurtured and they are still born expecting to be nurtured!

This expectation comes from the DNA where genetic memory is held. Have you ever witnessed a wild animal or even a bird not tend to their needy baby or even to an older offspring? Those that are lacking in this necessary parenting behavior have babies that do perish. So babies "know" what feels right and what does not. Since babies have been comforted since the beginning of at least mammal and bird life on earth, it does only good, huge amounts of good to comfort your baby. Putting your baby into a fear emotion by not comforting him will only create stress for him and yourself and can be the start of a mentality that tells him he is not cared for.

 Some confused but perhaps well meaning "experts" may spread their words around confusing mothers and fathers but what has worked for our species since the beginning and works for other successful species since the beginning till now, will still work now and into the future.
On the other hand when we view our culture with it's pushing children away, weaning too early (for a hominid), and not holding our babies nearly enough plus our coming up with odd experiments like letting babies self sooth (this by the way is a experiment when you realize anything done that is abnormal for how to treat a helpless baby can bear very bad results), we view a culture with lots of anti survival things going on, like drug addition for example.

 As many of you can see humans seem to be experiencing greater and greater amounts of deep depression and violent behavior. It seems that when we face an infant who is born to follow his developmental rights to be nursed, held and nurtured, and he gets only a fraction of this with well meaning parents that are following societies latest trends, we are shortchanging the infant and the grown human he is going to be.

By the time an infant in our society is 2 years old he will have experienced hundreds and hundreds of hours of crying instead of infants born in cultures where there is hardly a cry because these cultures and tribes parent from their heart and genetic memories instead from their heads.
When a human grows up with his first experiences (even though he most likely does not consciously  remember them) telling him that he is not cared for enough to be consoled and nurtured, he grows up feeling insecure, angry and hurt and he gets use to these feelings. Many spend the rest of their lives with this sadness and anxiety or anger.

Of course here in our society there are times when your child can not have what he may want at that moment (like more sugar or more tv etc.) but as long as he is given what he needs from the very beginning and that he has feelings of being loved and nurtured he will also have feelings of being safe and that builds confidence and with confidence he will be able to make it through the challenges life may throw his way!

In essence you can never go wrong when you parent from your heart.
As the saying goes love is patient and love is kind!

Comforting Is Love

I was watching a special the other evening about a tribe in a remote area of Africa.  There were very young woman ( about 15 years old ) who were mothers. I expected this but what I was amazed with was these very young mothers were so good to their babies! They carried them, even the older ones, everywhere! Several times in the middle of what they were doing they nursed or responded to a need of their child. These babies did not even cry at all, they only gave the slightest signals and were comforted.
 I also recall watching other specials and seeing all kinds of mammals displaying similar behavior, licking and nuzzling their young and responding immediately if there was any crying. I realized not one of these humans read parenting books and of course not the mammals. These parents were doing what has been done since the beginning of time, they were lovingly responding to their young. So called experts were not called upon telling them not to respond to their young. Books were not read saying whether or not to let their child or baby “cry it out”. They just seemed to know what to do, even 15 year old teens.
Then there are studies for example one big one sited in anthropologist Ashley Montagu’s book ‘Touching’, the study spanned the globe and found that out of 300 plus countries, cultures and tribes, the ones in which infants, babies and children are held, comforted and not left to cry it out, had no violence in comparison countries, cultures and tribes that let babies cry it out, these had lots of violence and aggressive behavior! This does not surprise me as we ourselves are living in a violent society with many adults walking around in deep depression and many with anger issues and aggressive behaviors.
Maybe it is time to heal the next generation with comfort, understanding and love. Even as adults if we cry we need to be comforted. Imagine if someone who you love is simply ignoring you when you are crying. Wouldn't this convince you they did not care?
I know we can’t give everything to our children that they may want but we can certainly give them our love under any conditions and all circumstances.
'Love always' means caring about someone's feelings and showing it. It is when we are young that we are the most vulnerable. It is when we are young that it matters most.