My Parenting Paradigm (and 2 recipes)

There is nothing more beautiful, nor painful, than watching your child's development. Sammy has cut another tooth this weekend. One of his top teeth. So now he is going to have one bottom and one top tooth. He is standing on his own and of his own volition now. Walking is around the corner. I anticipate that my life is going to change significantly when this occurs. It is strange how the parenting experience comes with such yin yang occurrences. I will be on the run and much busier in one respect, but then in another we will be on our way to all kinds of fun adventures. I look forward to Sammy being able to walk beside me on the trails. I also look forward to his new levels of exploration, but this will come with an added responsibility.

Perhaps I should spend some time thinking in text about the paradigm from which i am coming as a parent. First and foremost my wife and I practice attachment style parenting. Dr. Seers is a great source for those who may not be familiar with the basics of this style. For a mroe in depth study look into Bowlby and Ainsworth. Second I am an evolutionary psychologist. So where does this leave my philosophy of parenting?

Attachment style parenting is very focused on attentiveness and responsiveness. This means that when your baby cries you pick them up. You don't leave your baby to cry for hours in her crib. Remember that your baby is brand new to this world, they have not formed associations between the physical things outside the womb and themselves. Your baby has entered the world having had nine months of consistent and instantaneous needs met. Why should their most formative years be any different? A baby should trust the world, and most importantly babies should trust their parents. This cannot happen if a baby's experience indicates otherwise. Speaking from an evolutionary perspective a child that has been left to "cry it out" has been abandoned. The child eventually stops crying, not because she has learned that she will be okay, but out of a learned helplessness. This baby has learned that there is no use in crying, no one will help them. This learning is then hardwired in the brain and is continues to influence the development of the child into adolescence and beyond.

There is also the parents urge. Most parents will report that having to hear their baby cry is the most painful heart wrenching experience they have ever known. The immediate urge is to pick their baby up. And well they should! There is a reason we have evolved such boding techniques. A child with a secure attachment style is a happy child. A happy child is more often than not a well behaved child. The parents of a securely attached child are likewise happier and more secure in their parenting. There is a trust between the parents and the child that extends well beyond the traditional parent child roles. This mutual trust creates a feedback loop, and parenting as well as being a child, becomes a wonderful experience of exploration and learning.

It is not our job as parents to force our children to conform to our wills. It is our job as parents to create a safe environment in which our children can experience their lives and learn how things work. To include experiencing their own personal interactions with their environments (i.e. to learn who they are).

There will be more on this subject. For now, I just wanted to get some thoughts down and out.

I also wanted to share a couple of finger food recipes that I came up with. These I am sure are not new to the world, but they were certainly new to my kitchen!

Apple toast

1. Toast some bread
2. smear organic apple sauce all over the bread
3. Allow to soften
4. Cut into strips
5. Serve

Cheezios

1. Using organic cheerios and organic sliced cheese
2. Squeeze the cheerio and the cheese together squishing the cheese into the cheerio
3. Serve

My boy likes the apple toast and loves the cheezios.