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Last night I had a long conversation with Hannah, later my husband too, about some of the places where traditional "AP" (attachment parenting) philosophy falls short.  The spark of the conversation:  the book Hold On To Your Kids by Neufeld and Mate, plus a DVD seminar by Neufeld under the title The Power to Parent.

I wish I could get into the details of Neufeld’s thesis in a blog post.   Neufeld’s work is, like typical "AP" (Dr. Sears-type) parenting philosophy, grounded in attachment theory.  But it picks up where AP leaves off and goes a lot deeper.  AP is missing some important stuff.

Where AP has it right is in stressing early sensory bonding with the infant and the young child (through practices like babywearing, co-sleeping, breastfeeding, and caring for your own children); and training your children through modeling the behavior you’d like to see.  But these can only get you so far.  Once a child hits five or six or seven years old, they need more.  And it’s at this point that a lot of AP parents run into behavior problems  — relationship problems — that hugs and co-sleeping and gentle modeling can’t solve. 

Some think that they just haven’t given enough closeness and love.  Some, certain they’ve done everything right, figure that they have an exceptionally "high needs" or "difficult" child — and can’t think what to do next.  Some decide that AP was a bunch of bunk and switch gurus from Dr. Sears to somebody else.   

Meanwhile, some (not all) people who were raised (horrors!) by mainstream parents who may have spanked, used coercive discipline, put their kids in cribs, etc. etc. etc. seem to have turned out healthy, happy, and whole.   How can this be if we’re so certain that spanking is wrong?   That breast is best?  That cribs are nothing but cages?  Etc. etc.

The ends don’t justify the means, so if you’re convinced spanking (or anything else) is wrong, then don’t do it, even if you think it will work.  But judging purely on results:  Could it be that it’s not quite so simple as "Spanking is bad and won’t work" vs. "Spanking is good and will work?"

Neufeld’s research, according to the book and the video course, indicates there’s six kinds of attachment.  And that attachment is the most important factor in their maturation and character development.  As children mature, they need to pass through the stages in sequence:

1. Through nearness and the senses (easiest but also the most superficial kind of attachment);
2. Through imitation and identification (deeper);
3. Through belonging and loyalty ("I’m on your side; I want to obey you")
4. Through a feeling of being significant, important;
5. Through a feeling of love and affection;
6. Through being secure in the knowledge that they are known and understood (the deepest and most persistent and mature level of attachment).

AP is great for the earliest two stages, what with all the cuddling and bonding and closeness and modeling ("You can clean up just like me!"), but stops partway through.    The stories we hear of successful mainstream parenting, and we all know some, are the stories of people who grew up in a family that fostered, especially, the latter four kinds of attachment as the children grew through older childhood and their teen years.    The stories of people whose parents were confident in their work as parents.

The kinds of attachment can, to some extent, be formed independently of each other.   It’s not hard to imagine that in a family with very strict rules and harsh punishments for rule-breaking — the kind of stuff that "gentle parenting advocates" and AP experts decry — there might still be a strong sense of belonging and having a place in the family; a strong sense that Dad and Mom are on the same side as the kids; great love; the sure knowledge that the ties among them can never be ruptured.   

What Neufeld presents in the book and seminar (at least what I’ve seen so far) provides a lot of what traditional "AP" is missing. 

There are other aspects of it that I haven’t touched on.  One:  By "power to parent" Neufeld means the ability to wield influence (not leverage, not force) on your kids by virtue of their attachment to you, their love for you — many have lost this power over their kids, and it’s not as simple as the continuum between permissive/authoritarian.   Nor is it as simple as the superficial kinds of attachment that AP parenting promotes.  Two:  The whole job of parents is complicated by children’s propensity to attach to other people, not just parents, if it’s what they need to do to maintain emotional and physical safety.  Good or bad?  Depends who they attach to.  A kind, helpful teacher at school?  Good.  An abusive boyfriend or a neglected young peer? Bad.

I’m looking forward to watching the rest of the seminar sessions.

UPDATE: More thoughts.

Mark was away this morning, so I took the kids to Mass by myself.   On my way down the stairs I said a quick prayer to everybody’s guardian angels to PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE help me get through Mass without needing to flee the room.

And the kids did do very well during Mass, but downstairs at coffee/donut time Milo took off running around the crowded room and I had to chase him down and catch him.  A series of struggles ensued in which I decided that he had forfeited the right to carry a certain bag back to the car, not so much as a punishment as a practical decision:  so that I would better be able to keep hold of his hand as we crossed the street.  (These jerking-away-and-fleeing episodes tend to come in groups.)

So there I was, standing by the exit, struggling to get Oscar into his coat and to keep Mary Jane from falling out of the sling and to hang on to flailing Milo shrieking at the top of his lungs:  "NO!  I WANT TO CARRY THE BAG!  I DON’T WANT TO HOLD YOUR HAND!  I WILL WALK NEXT TO YOU!"  and trying to find out if it was possible to carry Milo (flailing) and Mary Jane at the same time.   

And along came a woman who was about to head out when she did a double take:  "Can I help you get to your car?"

I looked at my screaming kids, and at Oscar glaring at me, and briefly considered whether she might turn out to be the sort who would grab my baby and run away, rejected that (she had a teenage daughter with her), and said, "Um.  Thank you.  Yes."

She carried Mary Jane (who snuggled right into her neck to get away from the cold) and I carried Milo (who wept the whole way) and entertained me all the way to my car with stories of how once, when she had a three-year-old girl, the daughter unbuckled her seatbelt on the highway and jumped up and grabbed her (the mom’s) hair, yanking on her head while she was driving.    Then she helped me get MJ buckled into her seat while I hung on to Milo, and wished me a great day, and disappeared.  I was able to get Milo and myself into the minivan, out of the wind, where I could take my time calming him down before driving home.

Angels 1, temper 0.  Yes.

Ever since we bought the minivan a few months ago, Oscar and Milo have been riding in the "way back. " It feels so roomy, after being crammed into my sedan.  But I’d forgotten how nice it is to be close together, too.

For the last few days all three kids have been riding in the middle row because I’d folded down the back seat to transport some chairs and hadn’t put it back yet.  Oscar and I are now within shouting distance from each other. 

Wednesday on our way to Hannah’s, he asked me, "English comes from England and Spanish came from  Spain.  Where do they speak Latin?"  That began a 25-minute conversation about linguistics:  how babies once learned Latin from their mommies but not anymore; how Latin matured and became modern French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and Romansch; how English is not descended directly from Latin; why we have Latin words anyway; how the most people in the world speak Chinese, but people in the most countries speak English; how Spanish is the second most common language in our country; why Chinese and Japanese people do not use the Latin alphabet; how children in China learn to read and write; how the Chinese language is different from Latinate languages and from English.

(Finally, my very limited knowledge of Mandarin, which I acquired by playing with the Rosetta Stone software hosted at the county library, has come in handy.)

Thursday we found ourselves again driving to Hannah’s, and Oscar asked me:  "Mommy, if I want to be a saint, do I have to give away all my possessions?"  (He must have watched the CCC video about St. Francis recently.)  Thus began a 25-minute discussion about how St. Francis came to give away all his possessions; about how St. Frances Cabrini needed, not so much to give money away, but to acquire it, to do the work God was calling her to do, building hospitals and schools and such; about how Mother Cabrini didn’t actually use a hammer and saw to build the hospitals, instead she prayed and did important organizing and fund-raising work; about St. Jane Frances de Chantal, who became a saint in part by being a good wife and mother; about St. Joseph, who used his money and possessions to take care of his family.  Oscar said, "When I grow up I want to travel around the world giving money to many different kinds of people."  That began a discussion about listening to God for your vocation and how most people aren’t sure what their vocation is until they are grownups.  He pointed out that in the biography of Mother Cabrini we just read, little Francesca "Cecchina" Cabrini knew she wanted to be a missionary sister from the time she was nine years old.  Touche.  I told him I didn’t know for sure that my vocation was to be a mommy until I was about 23 years old.  And I told him about my friend J.P., who thought for a while that his vocation was to be a priest and then while he was in seminary he realized that it wasn’t that, and also about a priest we know who was a computer programmer for years before he figured out what his vocation was.

And then we got to Hannah’s and he ran off to play.

I think I’ll keep the boys in the middle row for a little bit longer.