How Attachment Parenting Affects Your Child in the Long Term

If you are considering using Attachment Parenting in the raising of your child you may wonder if this labor-intensive method is worthwhile. You may be asking yourself how Attachment Parenting will affect your child in the long term. While long term studies have yet to bear out whether Attachment Parenting is significantly more beneficial than “mainstream Parenting” there are several things you should consider in how Attachment Parenting affects your child in the long term.

•Attachment Parenting can promote mutual sensitivity. Parents who use the Attachment Parenting method report that they and their children share a high mutual sensitivity and trust. While children continue to test their parents throughout their lives they also respond to the high trust factor that Attachment Parenting seems to engender. The connected parent and child can easily communicate each other’s feelings. In addition, advocates of the Attachment Parenting method feel that once connected to your child you will be able to read his body language and appropriately redirect behavior, and your child will be able to read your desires and strive to please you.

•Attachment Parenting produces children who care. While many of the world’s problems can be traced to one group of people being insensitive to the needs and rights of another group, proponents of Attachment Parenting feel that one of the long term results of this type of parenting is producing a child who cares deeply about others through out their lives.

•Attachment Parenting organizes babies. Attachment Parenting provides a gentle, sensitive, external regulating system that takes over where the womb left off leaving the child with a heightened sense of security throughout his lifetime, similar to what he felt within the womb. When a mother carries her baby her rhythmic walk, familiar from the baby’s time in the womb, has a calming effect. Parents who practice Attachment Parenting feel that their children remain calm due to this style of parenting. This high-touch style of parenting with its emphasis on keeping the baby comfortable has a regulating effect on the infant’s disorganized rhythms resulting in children who grow up in tune with their bodies and a heightened sense of self-control. In short, a baby organizes into a calm, controlled child.

•Attachment Parenting promotes quiet alertness within the child. Parents who practice Attachment Parenting felt that their attachment-parented babies cry much less. Instead, these babies tend to spend much of their time in a state of quiet alertness which can lead to better brain development in the long term. By not fussing and crying, these children conserve their energy and use it for interacting. The result is babies and later children who are more pleasant to be with. Because a responsive parent will take time to enjoy the baby when he is in this state, the baby is motivated to stay in the state of quiet alertness longer.

•Attachment Parenting promotes trust. Children need to know that they can depend on their parents not only to meet their needs but also to keep them on the right path.

•Authority is vital to discipline, and authority must be based on trust. The baby that is raised with trust becomes the child who trusts the adults in his or her life. With that trust comes the willingness to behave better for the long-term. It is crucial for baby to trust that he will be kept safe.

•Attachment Parenting promotes independence. Parents who use this method feel that the Attachment Parenting actually encourages the right balance between dependence and independence. This is because the connected child trusts his parents to help him feel safe; he is more likely to feel secure exploring his environment. Child Development studies have shown that toddlers who have a secure attachment to their mother tend to adapt easier to new play situations and play more independently than less attached toddlers.