When I read this article in Sunday's paper it was like a breath of fresh air. I am an attachment mom and I am learning to be proud of it. (Also, sorry LA times if I wasn't supposed to re-post this. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.)
The Sunday Conversation: Mayim Bialik
The 'Big Bang Theory' actress, who has a doctorate in neuroscience, talks about her new book on parenting.
March 04, 2012|
By Irene Lacher, Special to the Los Angeles Times
A TV actress with a PhD in neuroscience, Mayim Bialik, 36, takes on a third career as book author with Tuesday's publication of "Beyond the Sling: A Real-Life Guide to Raising Confident, Loving Children the Attachment Parenting Way" (Touchstone). Bialik, best known for her starring role in the '90s sitcom "Blossom," is a regular on CBS' Caltech comedy, "The Big Bang Theory," where she plays nerdy neuroscientist Amy Farrah Fowler. Bialik, who earned her neuroscience degrees at UCLA, is married to her college sweetie, Michael Stone; they have two sons — Miles, 6½, and Frederick, 3½.
The main principles, as identified by Attachment Parenting International and Dr. [William] Sears and Dr. [Jay] Gordon, is the notion that natural birth means something to the mother and the child. Breast-feeding is the natural, optimal way to feed a child. Sleeping with your child, wearing your child in a sling as opposed to pushing them around in expensive strollers, those are things that matter biologically and sociologically for the structure of a family. Other principles include honoring a baby's voice, meaning honoring a baby's cry and not seeing babies as manipulative. Attachment parenting is not permissive parenting, but the general notion is children have feelings that should be valued, and we do not coerce them simply because it's inconvenient that they're having emotions.
I gather that this is pretty controversial. As I'm sure you know, critics of sleeping with your kids include the American Academy of Pediatrics, which says it raises the risk of sudden infant death syndrome.
The fact is safe co-sleeping is not difficult. The notion of babies being smothered is simply not true. And the benefits of sleeping together are profound.
How do you make it safe and what are the benefits?
The benefits are it facilitates breast-feeding, and it encourages more rest. Sleeping with your child allows for a different kind of vigilance. It allows for constant refreshing of the hormones that govern bonding with your baby. Those are things that often need to be refreshed every two hours, which is often when babies want to breast-feed. We have a mattress on the floor so no one has a risk of falling off. We are not taking medication or drinking heavily to the point where we're not easy to rouse.
I thought breast-feeding was widely accepted as the better alternative if you can do it. I thought perhaps where attachment parenting diverges is on how long you do it.
Right, so childhood weaning is the term for listening to your child's signals and not enforcing a concept of weaning and when a child is quote, done breast-feeding. Again, there's a tremendous amount of variation, but in general, attachment parenting does support what we call extended breast-feeding. So to say that it is recommended that babies breast-feed exclusively for six months is the general global recommendation for baby and mother's health, but there's still a strong emphasis on starting solids at 4 or 6 months. Both of my kids did not have solids until after their first birthday. They only had breast milk. That's not for everybody, but the notion that once children have teeth, they should be done breast-feeding or once they can ask for it should be done breast-feeding or that it's wrong, gross, inappropriate, any of those things to breast-feed a toddler is simply not true and is supported by a tremendous amount of research to the contrary.
So how old were they when you weaned them?
I did not wean them. My first son weaned at 2; my second son is 3½ and still breast-feeds. He doesn't breast-feed a lot, but I have not actively weaned him. We set a lot of boundaries around breast-feeding, so for example I wouldn't breast-feed my 3½ year old in the middle of the supermarket, where if a newborn needed to breast-feed, I would breast-feed them wherever they needed to. We tend not to breast-feed out of the house at this stage.
